He’ll dictate the question, “What’s the most you’ve ever lost on a coin toss?” And the very thing you may lose is the thing he cares the least of all about. “In the open country you can find anything… But every fortune leaves a trail…”

Joel and Ethan Coen come back to what they do best, photographing a simple story in the most simplistically beautiful of landscapes, such as they did in their other Oscar-contender, Fargo, but this time they introduce one of the greatest villains in years to the screen from the pages of Cormac McCarthy’s novel.

Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is a tall, slouching man with a lank, black haired mop-top and a sadistic smile, who travels through Texas with a tank of compressed air killing people with a captive bolt pistol. It propels a cylinder into their heads creating a clear tunnel straight through, at first, an individual’s forehead.

Chigurh is one strand in the twisted plot. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is another. The major defendant is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a working class man living with his wife in a trailer, who while hunting, comes across the remnants of a drug deal gone wrong in the middle of nowhere which everything wrong usually happens. Almost everyone on the scene is dead with their vehicles scattered around with shattered windows and bullet-decorated doors. It’s so bad, a dog is even shot and that’s pretty bad on pure principle alone. In the back of one pickup are stacked plastic bags of drugs. Llewelyn realizes one thing is missing: the money which he finds in a briefcase next to a man he tracks down who made it as far as under the shade of a tree… the only shade in this country…

The plot involves Moss’ attempt at keeping this $2 million, Chigurh attempt to take it away like a pursuer in a nightmare and Sheriff Bell trying to interrupt the ruthless murder trail. We also meet Moss’ innocent but affected wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald); a smooth bounty hunter named Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson); the businessman (Stephen Root) who hires Carson to track the money after investing in the drug deal, and a series of hotel and store clerks who are unlucky enough to meet Chigurh but at least once, lucky enough to survive with the flip of a coin. But! He did give the man the freedom to call it…

No Country For Old Men involves elements of a thriller and a chase but is essentially a depiction of characters attempting to comprehend a certain type of character: the manifestation of evil. Chigurh is so evil, he is almost funny to watch when you know what’s coming and with the double-meanings in his speeches. “He has his principles,” says the bounty hunter, who has knowledge of him but even he has to ask Chigurh later, “Do you know how crazy you are?” This movie is a masterful summary of moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and an irrefutable fate that was long ago decided. Roger Deakin’s cinematography is startlingly pleasant in its loneliness. When it comes to music, it seems Chigurh got there before us as the score is practically absent throughout the film. The seduction of No Country For Old Men exists in its pacing, silence and perfect dialogue and its quite often in pure silence and idling where the most drama is experienced. Javier Bardem deserved an Academy Award win for his supporting role along with his directors, Joel and Ethan Coen who took three for Best Adapted Screenplay, Directors and Best Picture of the Year. No Country For Old Men was also a official selection for the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. I know, fancy…

So remember once you start, there’s no clean getaway in commercial time as you’re one of the few witnesses of the events in this Country on DVD.

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