STUDIO: Buena Vista
RELEASE DATE: March 11th, 2008
STARRING: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root, and Kelly MacDonald
WRITTEN BY: Ethan & Joel Coen
DIRECTED BY: Ethan & Joel Coen
FEATURES: Working With The Coens
The Making Of No Country For Old Men
Diary Of A Country Sheriff

Is it possible to clearly see a movie as hyped and acclaimed as No Country For Old Men for what it really is? After winning dozens of awards, including the Oscars for Best Picture, Supporting Actor, Director, and Adapted Screenplay, is it even imaginable that a DVD renter or buyer could separate the film itself from what has surrounded it since its debut at Cannes? If you haven't seen it, expectations must be through the roof. And, even now, the backlash that comes with any Best Picture winner is starting to swirl around No Country For Old Men with posts like "it's not that good" sprouting up every day. Guess what? It is that good and it's one of those incredible films that gets better every time you see it. When I first saw it in theaters, I thought it was great but almost a little too cold and detached. The second time through, when you know the story and you can focus on the filmmaking, what felt distant now feels like a pair of masterful composers doing what they do best. No Country For Old Men may not be my favorite Coen film (which is saying something, considering it would be far and away the best of most filmmakers' careers) but it is certainly the culmination of everything that these two geniuses have been doing for over twenty years. Old Men takes themes that have dominated the Coen brothers' work for years - redemption, journey, otherworldly evil - and distills them into cinematic perfection.

Based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy (and you really should familiarize yourself with ALL of his books when you have the time), No Country For Old Men opens as a relatively standard action-thriller with Western influences. The man in white is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), an average guy who comes across a drug deal gone very bad and runs off with a suitcase of money. What Llewelyn could never imagine is the pure evil that comes with that decision. Anton Chigurh is the kind of ultra-violent villain that ranks up there with Hannibal Lecter or Keyser Soze. Most of the people that have ever met him are dead and now he's after Llewelyn. And he's not the only one. Following the man in black is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a local lawman who will learn that the human capacity for evil only seems to grow with each passing generation.

If No Country For Old Men was just a pitch-perfect thriller - which it is for three-quarters of its running time - it would have a very good film but the movie crosses over into something else in the final act when it becomes significantly more. The backlash surrounding the end of No Country has been from people looking for easy answers. They're watching another movie. The Coen brothers are rarely interested in simple things and McCarthy never has been. They're vision turns from a great genre piece into a dark dream more concerned with themes and questions than answers. No Country is about the unstoppable power of evil. Trying to keep it at bay is like trying to stop a storm from coming in. You can't do it. Just take shelter. It's a haunting, powerful masterpiece that everyone should not only see, but make sure to include in their collection.

When you do include the current edition of No Country in your collection, do so with the awareness that you're going to get double-dipped. There's simply NO way this is the final home market word on this great film and one could criticize Buena Vista for rushing out what feels like a quickie DVD to capitalize on the recent Best Picture win (before you mention that the DVD was scheduled long before the Oscars, it was pretty clear No Country would win the big prize months ago.) A movie like this almost always gets more than three measly featurettes and you know that it will eventually. Commentaries, interviews, and maybe even deleted scenes are inevitable. For now, just a brilliant movie will have to do.