Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11 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

Great film, which many people seem to hate
This is the Coen Brothers back to their best, after a mis-step with Intolerable Cruelty and, frankly, an awful remake of The Ladykillers.
The pacing, script, acting, direction are all first class.

Many people seem to have awarded this just 1 star. That is a disgrace.

If you liked Three Burials, Michael Clatyon and In The Vally of Elah, this will be your type of film.

If not, watch The Jeremy Kyle Show in your underwear and have a pot-noodle.

That may be more your cup of tea.

Guess I'm just too unsophisticated
After a great start, this film in the middle morphs into a typical Coen Brothers film (ie. lots of half-watchable, highly stylised scenes which involve people talking to the audience and not each other), and then morphs into just boring drivel. Making me not care about the kelly macdonald character (who was actually very real) in the waffly and totally unconvincing final scene with the hair-do was quite a feat. And I couldn't for the life of me listen to whatever Tommy Lee Jones was rambling about at the end - the recounted dream of a character who'd barely been in the movie, and even when he was who had nothing to do except ramble (to the audience, not to the other characters).

Then again, I'm probably one of those blockbuster loving morons referenced so often in the other reviews. Funny though - the likers of this film almost all praise the acting and the cinematography and the production design and the direction and the writing and all the other technical stuff. Anyone ever hear anyone say all that about Goodfellas? Why bother - great films make you forget they're films and you talk about the characters, no all that technical nonsense.

The Coens are WAY overrated. They can do melodrama - but drama.....

crap ending
Very good movie, beautifully shot, excellent acting, cinematography, locations, villain etc let down by a rubbish ending.