No Country for Old Men: DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

The Academy Award-winning, modern-day Western "No Country for Old Men" hails from Ethan and Joel Coen, who arm themselves with Cormac McCarthy's fantastic 2005 book of the same name and deliver one of 2007's best films in the process.

Working from their own script, the Coens craft a violent, engrossing movie that never telegraphs or condescends; it keeps its twists and its surprises close to its bleeding heart, which is significant because in this violent movie, that heart often is hemorrhaging.

Set in 1980, the film stars Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran hunting one day along the Texas-Mexico border when he comes upon a grisly mass murder in the desert. There, he also comes upon a stash of drugs and, later, $2 million in cash sandwiched within a black case.

It's when Moss takes the money that everything goes sour for him.

After all, working against him is the formidable psychopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Barded in an Academy Award-winning performance), a man who sports a Buster Brown blowout and who for reasons best left for the screen, decides that Moss is going to pay for stealing that money. He's going to track Moss down, he's going to get that money for himself, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

One person who does is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who completes the film's deadly triangle by going after Moss and Chigurh. This superb movie is about the sly weaving of skill and chance that unfolds between them all, with the characters crisscrossing in and out of each other's reach with such mounting heat, they create a knot onscreen that tightens in your gut.

With its accomplished performances, direction, writing and cinematography, "No Country for Old Men" ultimately is a movie haunted by what the West was and what the West has become. At its core, the movie knows they aren't so different--and that's what troubles it.

Grade: A

Read the full unedited review here.

View the trailer below: