Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-06-02
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
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 veteran who needs 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 veteran, 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 conscious, 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

Amazon.co.uk

No Country for Old Men is Joel and Ethan Coen’s most gripping and accomplished film to date. DVD special features include a look at the Coen Brothers’ film-making process, showing how they assembled and shot one of the most compelling thrillers of the year, as well as shedding new light on the complex characters and celebrated creators of the film. Bonus features on this disc:

- The Making of No Country for Old Men

- Working with the Coens

- Diary of a Country Sheriff

Synopsis
With NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, the Coen Brothers have found a perfect match in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy. Their adaptation of McCarthy's praised novel is a staggering masterpiece. In this almost impossibly faithful adaptation, the film takes place in a small Texas border town in 1980. Sheriff Bell (a never-been-better Tommy Lee Jones) has ruled the land for years without the use of a gun, but a new brand of reckless lawlessness has taken over his town. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is an innocent Everyman with a devoted wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), but when he stumbles across a drug deal gone deadly and finds two million dollars, he's determined to keep it for himself. There's only one problem. He's being pursued by one of the most amoral, evil psychopaths that the big screen has ever seen. Wearing an absurd haircut and brandishing a pressurized weapon that's used to murder cattle, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) creeps forward on his mission to track Moss down and return the money to its rightful owners to save his own skin. As the tension mounts, the body count begins to rise, confirming Sheriff Bell's inability to battle this new wave of modern brutality.


The most striking thing about the Coen Brothers' thriller is their masterly use of silence to create an almost unbearable level of tension. Cinematographer Roger Deakins is once again at the top of his game, beautifully capturing this stark and lonely world. The well-rounded cast is clearly excited to be a part of such a stellar production--particularly Bardem, whose Chigurh is a freakishly mysterious monster, and is certain to haunt viewers long after the final credit has rolled. In a career filled with striking achievements, this might very well be the Coen Brothers' finest. It is filmmaking at its best.

Customer Reviews

Read the book instead
Watched this recently, have to agree with some of the other reviews on here, very disappointing. Some great performances, notably oscar winner Javier Bardem, but a difficult film to follow if you haven't read the book.

Do yourself a favour, and do just that. Cormac McCarthy is one of the greatest living writers in the English language.

Let's hope the forthcoming adaption of his book 'The Road' fares better...

A film for old men, and anyone else with at least a decade of life experience.
Strange that so many reviewers take a jab at the film because of the ending. The quiet ending *was* the point. The Sheriff was irrelevant in this new, more violent time, in his heyday he was used to cuffing kids around the ear rather than booking them, and then seeing them generally turn into decent adults. But Javier Bardem's character, Anton Chigurh, is the personification of this new breed of "bad guy" that does deals out in the no-mans-land of the US/Mexican border areas. Remorseless and bereft of conscience, he sees murder simply as a means to an end. Against this new breed of criminal, the Sheriff is now an irrelevance, just so much chaff to be thrown to the winds of time. He couldn't stand in the way of these new criminals for a moment, and he knows it. This film is about the investigation that finally broke him, the couple he couldn't save, and which results in his handing in his badge, decamping with his wife to a safer, quieter spot and finally admitting that he is outmatched.

Those who didn't read the book beforehand (I'd read it 2 years previously) were probably taken in by the action scenes in the various clips and teasers, and expected a full-on action adventure.

For me, the film was faultless. The cinematography excellent, the dialogue true to the book, including some parts of the book I laughed aloud to read, e.g. "It's a mess, ain't it". "well, if it ain't, it'll do 'til the mess gets here". There was nothing here to dislike. Characterisation was excellent, the acting likewise, usually completely loose and natural.

So, if you were one of those that didn't like the ending, please don't blame the film. Read the book while you're waiting for the film release, and don't be taken in by trailers in future.

frustrating ending
as usual a well made film, but nothing really to it, didn't really care about anyone, they didn't seem to have proper characters and the end was a complete cop out.