No Country for Old Men
(R)

Our rating:

Your rating:

(Click a rabbit to cast your vote.)

Javier Bardem as psychotic killer Anton Chigurh

Joel and Ethan Coen's thriller is a hellaciously entertaining screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 rueful, melancholic novel set in West Texas. It's about, among other things, the bizarre ways in which crime and criminals have morphed. Josh Brolin, in a performance that should reshape his career, plays Llewelyn Moss, a Joe Sixpack who goes out hunting and stumbles upon $2 million and a slew of dead bodies. Then, there's Tommy Lee Jones as tough, cracker barrel-philosophizing sheriff Ed Tom Bell who's aching with regret. Most memorable, Javier Bardem is Anton Chigurh, a dead-eyed psychotic killer straight out of our deepest, most twisted nightmares. You'd have to go back to Norman Bates or Hannibal Lecter to find a more deeply disturbing crackpot than Anton.

Tommy Lee Jones as regretful Sheriff Bell

One thing you can pretty much always say about movies made by the brothers Coen is that they're well made. That goes double for this one, with its superb cinematography by the indispensable Roger Deakins, who helps brilliantly evoke the film's world of small-town motels, gas stations and streets heavy with malaise. The movie also features some cool, relentless, chase-suspense stuff like Moss being pursued by bad guys; a dog and the homicidal Anton in extended sequences that really give the film a kick. Missing this time is the smarty-pants condescension and showboating that often trivializes and undercuts the Coens' work. Still, the movie fritters away its righteous head of tension by sticking to the ironic, coincidence-heavy ending of McCarthy's book. (What works on the page works much less effectively for the movies.) Even so, if the Coens lost their footing after 1996's hugely entertaining Fargo, No Country for Old Men marks a return to their brooding, scary and darkly hilarious best.

by Stephen Rebello

credit: Richard Foreman/Courtesy of Miramax Films