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Wow!!! No Country For Old Men is an absolutely brilliant tense, thrilling masterpiece from the Coen brothers. I was literally blown away by how good this film really was. It is one of the rare thrillers that wins the Best Picture award. It is a film that you get totally gripped with in such a suspenseful way that makes you feel that you are really there taking the journey with all of the characters and are feeling some of the things that the characters are feeling within it. The suspense isn't so much the events that happen but it was mostly the suspense is between the characters within the film. There is this sort of cat-and-mouse game that is played where one man chases and goes after another man for money. This is very hard to watch on some rare occasions because it is a very violent film which is so deadly and so unmerciful that it can make you feel a tiny bit sick. I don't really know whether to call this film a western or not because there aren't any cowboys but I suppose it is because it is set in deserts and large fields where they are sheriffs wearing cowboy hats. I find it to be a rather rare treasured film from filmmakers that have done similar sorts of films in the past.
The acting from the entire cast it absolutely awesome! Josh Brolin's performance as Llewelyn Moss was really good. Llewelyn is a welder and Vietnam veteran who flees with two million dollars in drug money that he finds in an open field in Texas. It was more of the hard situations he ended up in because of his being a fugitive to Anton to earn the $2 million. His performance was a good contender for Best Leading Actor at the 80th Academy Awards but I think Emile Hirsch hada better chance at it. Tommy Lee Jones is absolutely awesome as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. He is a laconic, soon-to-retire small-town sheriff who is meant to try and hunt down Anton Chigurh. Javier Bardem delivers one of the most terrifying male performances of all time and one of the best film villains of all time too. Anton is cold hearted killer who is after the $2 million so he can buy more weapons. Anton Chigurh is a sociopathic assassin hired to recover the drug money.
The Coen Brothers have made a film that is rather unusual for them to make because they haven't made any other film like No Country For Old Men before. I think the one other Coen that is similar to No Country For Old Men is O Brother Where Art Thou because that is a bit like a western apart from that is a comedy and No Country For Old Men isn't. They both go from black comedies to a crime thriller and have created their best and most accomplished work so far. This film is adapted from a 2005 novel of the same name by American author Cormac McCarthy. It is a very well filmed motion picture that is full of suspense that makes it feel like a rollercoaster.
No Country For Old Men is the best of the five Best Picture nominees of 2007 which is why it deserved to win Best Picture. It is the best work from the Coen Brothers so far. Bardem's performance is one of the most terrifying performances of all time. Javier Bardem's performance is the best male performance of the year, only just beating Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street even though that is my favourite film. 2007 was an outstanding year for cinema so No Country For Old Men is the 3rd best of 2007 after Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street and Ratatouille. For the past two years in a row, Best Supporting Actor has gone to two actors playing two extremely fearful villains: Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in 2007 and then Heath Ledger as The Joker in 2008. No Country For Old Men is one of the best thrillers of all time and is one of my favourite cat-and-mouse films ever too!! It is a masterpiece that you will be totally gripped by from the start right until the very end.
10/10
