Perfection. One of the best movies in years.

Rating: 10/10 (5 July 2008)

The plot of No Country for Old Men is basic and relentless. A hunter, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad in the Texas desert. He finds 2 million dollars in cash stashed in a briefcase and, of course, makes the poor decision of taking it.
Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, the rightful owner of the money who wants it back very badly. Well, actually Chigurh is a psychopath and doesn't really care all that much about the money. He just wants to make a very violent point based on his own twisted sense of right and wrong.
Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is a worn out small town sheriff. He's concerned about all the violence going on in his jurisdiction, but he's a little too intimidated to really do much about it. He sort of hopes the drug dealers will all kill each other, so he can just sit back and clean up the mess.
The movie takes off from there at a breakneck pace. Chigurh is one of the most frightening psychopaths to grace the big screen in years. His pursuit of Moss is relentless, with him killing anything and anyone that gets in his path. His unique array of deadly weapons is memorable and unsettling. He's really more of a serial killer who got into the drug business as an excuse to pursue his hobby. He has a bizarre set of morals and sometimes lets victims decide their fate based on a coin toss.
While the movie works as a crime thriller, it also works as a bit of an allegory. Moss represents the failings of the average man. He's filled with hubris and greed, sure he can find a way out of any situation, even certain death. Chigurh is Death. Relentlessly approaching, sometimes taking random victims, unstoppable. This is a story about a man trying to literally "cheat death". Sheriff Bell is a philosopher, sitting on the sideline, trying to make sense of all the violence in a rapidly changing world.
The conclusion of the film will be controversial for some. All along we anticipate some sort of a showdown between Chigurh, Moss and Bell. This never happens. It's a very anti-climactic ending, yet it speaks volumes. It speaks of a reality where there are no villains or heroes. There is no cowboy riding off into the sunset with justice done. Just real people drawn into dangerous situations by their own flawed motivations and psychology. Chigurh's murder of Moss' innocent wife reinforces his own insanity, but also reinforces the senselessness of everything that has just occurred. Perhaps this senselessness is what leads Sheriff Bell into retirement at the conclusion of the story. He can't even begin to understand what motivates the younger generation toward the lives of violence they have chosen.