By Brian Duff
Not quite a western, almost a crime drama, with elements of morality parable, horror and noir, No Country For Old Men was exactly the cinematic stew long expected and appreciated from the enigmatic Coen Brothers. A culmination of a quarter century of work – from Blood Simple to Raising Arizona, from Fargo to The Big Lebowski – No Country For Old Men mixes and matches its genres, re-routing long-held filmic conventions and producing a triumphantly unique film so roundly (and curiously) embraced that it captured four Oscars, three BAFTAs, and countless other awards. The Coens are on top form here visually, and Cormac McCarthy’s excellent novel provides much of the idiosyncratic cadence and diction that makes the film’s dialogue so poetic.
While full credit is due to the writing and direction, casting – especially against type – has long been the Coens’ great strength. As such, their leading man Josh Brolin inhabits his West Texas knockabout good ol’ boy Llewelyn Moss bodily, finally fulfilling his own early promise (The Young Riders, The Goonies) in this landmark role. While Moss is not a conventional hero, he is also not a baddie, which marked a remarkable turn for Brolin. At the time of No Country For Old Men, the actor was undergoing an ambitious career revival built on the back of many villainous characterisations (Into The Blue, The Dead Girl, Planet Terror and American Gangster), and the Coens’ classic allowed Brolin to demonstrate a welcome range.

Standing toe to toe with Brolin (although sharing no screen time) is the devilishly odd Javier Bardem as otherworldly assassin Anton Chigurh, whose Prince Valiant haircut and penchant for rhetorical riddle-speak belies his Angel Of Death conduct. His remains a character for the ages: at once terrifying, hilarious and borderline supernatural. Unlike Moss, Chigurh’s character is left wide open in McCarthy’s tome, with his physical description, motivations and even nation of origin still a mystery in its final, cryptic pages. Here, however, he is every inch a man of specificity and precision, all qualified to the Coens’ particular desires. The third strand of the plot is Tommy Lee Jones’ jaded narrator, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, who bears witness to the film’s events, at once wise and witless in the face of a new kind of evil. Though Jones was able to use his famed world weariness to great effect here, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell allowed the actor to explore new nuances, and the character is a brilliant entry point for the audience.
Elsewhere, Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald (Trainspotting) made a blistering stateside splash (foreshadowing her great work on TV’s Boardwalk Empire) as anxious paramour Carla Jean Moss – perhaps the film’s only legitimately heroic character. Her casting is further evidence of the Coens’ willingness to search high and low for the perfect actor as she, despite several notable roles since her breakout, had yet to play a character so quintessentially American as Carla Jean.
Despite the gun-shot wounds, the gushing blood, and the tense, thriller aspects which dot the film’s landscape, No Country For Old Men is also tremendously funny, with Woody Harrelson’s hapless man-hunter Carson Wells a star crossed mess, Stephen Root’s self-satisfied money man doomed from the moment he hits the screen, Beth Grant’s frenzied, archetypal Coens-style old lady fanning absurdist fires, and Garret Dillahunt’s country bumpkin doing linguistic battle with Jones’ Bell. In short, it’s a grand American cinematic tapestry utterly peerless in its density and sheer entertainment value.