Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-03-11
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 122 minutes

Amazon.com
The Coen brothers make their finest thriller since Fargo with a restrained adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel. Not that there aren't moments of intense violence, but No Country for Old Men is their quietest, most existential film yet. In this modern-day Western, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a Vietnam vet who could use a break. One morning while hunting antelope, he spies several trucks surrounded by dead bodies (both human and canine). In examining the site, he finds a case filled with $2 million. Moss takes it with him, tells his wife (Kelly Macdonald) he's going away for awhile, and hits the road until he can determine his next move. On the way from El Paso to Mexico, he discovers he's being followed by ex-special ops agent Chigurh (an eerily calm Javier Bardem). Chigurh's weapon of choice is a cattle gun, and he uses it on everyone who gets in his way--or loses a coin toss (as far as he's concerned, bad luck is grounds for death). Just as Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a World War II vet, is on Moss's trail, Chigurh's former colleague, Wells (Woody Harrelson), is on his. For most of the movie, Moss remains one step ahead of his nemesis. Both men are clever and resourceful--except Moss has a conscience, Chigurh does not (he is, as McCarthy puts it, "a prophet of destruction"). At times, the film plays like an old horror movie, with Chigurh as its lumbering Frankenstein monster. Like the taciturn terminator, No Country for Old Men doesn't move quickly, but the tension never dissipates. This minimalist masterwork represents Joel and Ethan Coen and their entire cast, particularly Brolin and Jones, at the peak of their powers. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Customer Reviews

Disappointing, sad, incomplete film
I guess I was jaded by all those glowing reviews and I expected more. In a nutshell, our protagonist, Llewelyn Moss, stumbles upon a massacre of sorts and manages to steal the money ($2 million) from one of the dead victims. Of course you might steal $200, but for $2 million, they will find you.

Of course Llewelyn knows he can beat them, and wages a cross-country battle for his soul, and for the souls of his family and the local law-enforcement, mostly for nothing.

Don't expect the details of the end of the movie to be explicit; the film just stops and leaves more unaswered questions than I cared for.

Javier Bardem is a supremely creepy and wildly psychotic bad guy hot on Llewellyn's trail. That both are extremely resourceful and very driven gives the chase urgency and keeps this longish film going.

There is a totally unnecessary foray into a Woody Harrelson character, and what is probably supposed to be the overriding character and theme, played by Tommy Lee Jones' aging, tired, boring retiring local sheriff, complete with longish laments about the state of the world.

I can see why some liked this so much, and it's certainly material done with talent and finesse. The story of death and greed and inhumanity (and complaining about it all) just doesn't quite cross my threshold into good entertainment. This is worth seeing, but hardly one of my favorites.

Beautiful cinematography and interesting plot keeps you interested
I had heard much of this movie in the past year, with many suggestions from people that it is a definite must see. Well, they were right! I bought it before watching it, heeding advice that it is a must-own must-see film. The Coen brothers brought the novel to life and included in it a beautiful cinematic overview of 1980 Texas. The acting was superb on all levels, and the ending is unlike any movie I have seen in a decade. If you haven't seen it, BUY IT! It is well worth it!

Too bad about the ending
I was so disgusted by the ending of this movie that I ordered the Cormac McCarthy novel and read it. -- In the movie, we see the sheriff looking down at a body in the morgue. In the book it is made clear that this is Moss's body. In the movie Chigurh is waiting for Moss's wife when she comes back from her mother's funeral and asks her to flip a coin to see whether she lives or dies. In the book we see him shoot her.
In both the movie and the book we don't see Chigurh after his car accident. In the book, the accident is followed by a long lucubration in italics which is extremely boring. The end of the movie you know: the movie drops the characters and the story and says THE END. -- For a man, the movie is enjoyable to watch until the awful ending. Men like action, men like violence. I don't imagine many women would like it.
The best I can say is that the Coen brothers made a watchable movie, avoiding their many bad habits. The movie is actually pointed at the viewer with the intention of gripping and entertaining, by comparison with the accustomed onanistic solipsism of the Coens. -- I did admire Chigurh's two philosophical remarks about the coins to be flipped. "The coin is from 1958; it took 22 years to get here." And later, to Moss's wife, "The coin got here the same way I did." I don't remember these lines from the book.