What Do The Critics Say?

"This magnificent film represents the best work the Coen Brothers have done since "Fargo". Like that movie classic this is a cold-blooded thriller with a darkly humorous edge. Stunningly photographed by Roger Deakins, who also shot "The Assassination of Jesse James", it’s a film filled with suspense which manages to be very cinematic even as it remains true to the book in most details. Hitchcock wouldn’t have done the suspense better. 5 STARS." David Stratton ABC AT THE MOVIES "Tommy Lee Jones combines forces with the Coen Brothers in the unforgiving winds of the West Texas prairie. Javier Barden's psycho-killer and the Coens' creepy direction and screenwriting pops out the grittiest film of the year." Ron Wilkinson MONSTERS AND CRITICS "A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor." Todd McCarthy VARIETY "No Country for Old Men is the first movie I've seen in a very long while that deserves to be called a masterpiece. It's such a stunning achievement in storytelling." Lou Lumenick NEW YORK POST "You know, they’ve based it on this wonderful book by Cormac McCarthy, one of America’s most impressive writers these days. And I just loved it. It’s resonates within me. It’s got such a sense of place and language. Tommy Lee Jones is also the best he’s been in ages. 5 STARS." Margaret Pomeranz ABC AT THE MOVIES

"An intense, nihilistic thriller as well as a model of implacable storytelling, this is a film you can't stop watching even though you very much wish you could." Kenneth Turan LOS ANGELES TIMES "People are calling it the best film of the year, and if it isn't, it's darn close." Luke Y Thompson NEW TIMES "Bleak but beautiful, and with characteristic Coen shafts of gallows humor,about as perfect as a film can get, a shocking and mesmerizing experience." Frank Swietek ONE GUY'S OPINION "The most ambitious and impressive Coen film in at least a decade, featuring the flat, sun-blasted landscapes of west Texas "and an eerily memorable performance by Javier Bardem." Andrew O'Hehir SALON.COM "Let's just say it's all amazing. No Country for Old Men is exactly the kind of challenge film buffs will love if you're sick of the by the numbers, multiplex drivel." Dennis Przywara FILM THREAT "So ferociously acted and executed that it practically takes a bite out of you. You won't believe how great it is." Matt Pais METROMIX "This film is an evil delight; adapted from Cormack McCarthy’s book, it’s filled with suspense, pitch-black humor and one of the most memorable villains in recent cinema." Richard Roeper EBERT & ROEPER

The Inside Story At once a modern legend and a literary maverick, Cormac McCarthy was already renowned for his extraordinary stories set against the changing American West when he published No Country For Old Men in 2003. The book, featuring one of his most visceral, multi-layered and contemporary stories, was an instant success. A sinewy, suspenseful, humor-spiked thriller, McCarthy’s page-turning tale of an honest man who happens upon over two million in cash on the Texas borderlands is a story of headlong pursuit. It’s also a provocative meditation on good and evil in a modern West that has grown into a land more violent and lawless than the mythic frontier of yore. At the heart of the story lie some of McCarthy’s most evocative themes, which he has explored in ten novels that have become classics: the fast-approaching end of an entire way of Western life; the last stand of honor and justice against a broken world; the ongoing human struggle against the sinister; the dark comedy and violence of modern times; the interplay of temptation, survival and sacrifice; and, added into the mix, a touch of sustaining love and a sliver of hope in the darkness. It’s hard to imagine a better match for the dusky wit and stark humanity of McCarthy’s characters than Joel and Ethan Coen, who burst onto the American cinema scene with the influential comic noir classic "Blood Simple" and have gone on to forge some of the most inventive motion picture tales of our times including the Oscar® winning "Fargo". The Coens first became aware of McCarthy’s novel through producer Scott Rudin ("The Queen" & "There Will Be Blood"). "He brought it to us thinking we might have an affinity for it," Ethan recalled, "and we did like the book. We also thought we could do something with it." "It’s as close as we’ll ever come to doing an action movie," adds Joel. "It’s a chase story, with Chigurh chasing Moss and the Sheriff bringing up the tail. It’s a lot of physical activity to achieve a purpose. It’s interesting in a genre way; but it was also interesting to us because it subverts the genre expectations." The Coens now set about adapting the story into a taut cinematic structure, emphasizing the darkly humorous and humanly revealing interplay between Llewelyn Moss, who discovers millions of dollars in the wreckage of a drug deal gone wrong, and the two antithetical men who are tracking him: the chilling psychopath Chigurh, on the one extreme, and the town’s profoundly decent Sheriff Bell, on the other. The result was a film that would take the Coens forward into new territory. "There is a good deal of humor in the book, although you wouldn’t call it a humorous novel, exactly," says Joel. "It’s certainly very dark, and that was our defining characteristic. The book is also quite violent, quite bloody. So the movie is probably the most violent we’ve ever made. In that respect it reflects the novel, I hope, fairly accurately." Tommy Lee Jones, who was cast in the role of Sheriff Bell, initially read McCarthy’s book shortly after it was published and was intrigued even then, and only more so when he learned the Coen Brothers would adapt the story. "Cormac McCarthy is arguably the best living prose stylist that we have in America," says Academy Award winner Jones ("The Fugitive"). "His work raises intriguing questions for people who make films." Josh Brolin is another big McCarthy fan who read the novel long before the screenplay. "This book is one of the most amazing, violent and perfectly vernaculared stories that I've read in a long time," Brolin said. "Even though it's a linear story, just the structure of it was incredible. I just love the trio of Moss, Chigurh and Bell, and how it seemed like it was one person split three ways." As for the screenplay, Brolin says: "It’s an emotional, primal ride that is also about human principles of right and wrong, temptation and honor." Acclaimed Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who landed the plum role of Chigurh, the killer who embodies the sinister heart of the borderlands drug world, was not familiar with the book until he had read the script, which instantly grabbed him. "I thought it was a very powerful story about violence and about how to control and stop the huge wave of violence that the world is living through right now," the four time winner of the Spanish Cinema Writers Circle CEC Award says of the adaptation. Kelly Macdonald, who plays Moss’s young wife Carla Jean, had a similarly strong reaction to the screenplay: not only to its human drama but its humor. EMMY Award winner MacDonald ("The Girl in the Café"), says she "saw just how funny it was. The characters came so alive off the page and they’re all quite dry-witted and that’s the thing that really stuck with me." At the heart of "No Country For Old Men" are its characters. Men and women who inhabit a rapidly changing West. A place where lawlessness has led to a brave new world of international drug running and where the old rules no longer seem to apply. "The movie is, no surprise given the title of the book, in part about Sheriff Bell’s perspective on time going by, on aging and on things changing," says Joel. "I assume that’s part of why the book is set in 1980, and not strictly speaking present day," adds Ethan. "It takes place just when the cross-border drug trade was getting very brutal, and that provides an opportunity for reflection by the Sheriff." In considering who might play this riveting, yet reflective, character, the Coens found that Tommy Lee Jones quickly came to mind. "There are just very, very few people who can carry a role like this one," Joel reflected. "Sheriff Bell is the soul of the movie and also, in a fundamental way, the region is so much a part of Sheriff Bell, so we needed someone who understood it. Being a Texan, the region is a part of his core." While the role proved irresistible, Jones says he had one initial hesitation. "I suppose I have played several Texas law enforcement officers so I thought about that several times before accepting the job." What was it then that sealed the role? "The attraction of working with Cormac McCarthy’s material was overwhelming." The Coens found casting the Llewelyn Moss character somewhat more challenging than casting Sheriff Bell. Moss, a Vietnam veteran, is a decent-hearted Texas good ol’ boy who would likely never have crossed the law, until he comes across a great deal of drug money that appears to belong to a group of dead men. "Moss is sort of a regular person who's caught up in extraordinary circumstances and has one unreflective moment where he decides to appropriate a bunch of money that isn't his," Ethan explained. Eventually the Coens found an actor who was able to bring a dynamic presence, rife with a distinctly Western touch, to the role, in Josh Brolin. "Josh grew up on a ranch so he had a feeling for where Moss comes from," explains Ethan. "He was just a natural in the role." Brolin says "Moss is really a compilation of a lot of guys that I grew up with. These are guys who have principles, yet I think they would probably do the same thing as Moss under the circumstances." Providing the third side of the film’s taut moral triangle is Anton Chigurh, the chilling, offbeat villain who leaves no witnesses behind. The uniquely dark character would call for an actor capable of going to extremes of intensity. The role went to acclaimed Spanish actor Javier Bardem, winner of the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of the real life, remarkable, bed-ridden hero Ramón Sampedro, in the internationally acclaimed "Mar adentro" ("The Sea Inside" 2004). "One of the themes of the movie is this huge wave of violence that the world has been taken by, and Chigurh symbolizes that violence in that he has no roots, he always takes things one step further and he’s unstoppable." Alongside this trio of men are two equally compelling women. The role of Moss’s wife Carla Jean went to Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald. Joel says Macdonald surprised the filmmakers with her audition recalling "we cast Kelly Macdonald, who happens to be a Scottish actress from Glasgow. I just didn't believe she could play a gal from West Texas; but she convinced us otherwise in the audition." "Kelly has the West Texan accent down perfectly," notes Jones. "Between takes she was this sweet little girl from Scotland but when the camera turned on she became this pretty, tough West Texas gal. I was very impressed." The other central relationship in the story is that of Sheriff Bell and his wife Loretta, a character who is instrumental in helping to define Bell. Tess Harper, who herself hails from Arkansas, was cast in the role. The Coens had been fans of her work since "Tender Mercies", and note her ability to "convey a lot in a very short space of time." Harper decribes her character as "the rock that holds the Sheriff to where he needs to be. She’s his one port in the storm." Also in the cast is accomplished film, television and stage actor, 1988 Emmy Award winner Woody Harrelson ("Cheers") playing 'cleaner' Carson Wells who is hired to eliminate Anton Chigurh and return the missing drug money. Coincidently, Harrelson picked up the 1999 Bronze Wrangler at the Western Heritage Awards for his role as Big Boy Matson in "The Hi-Lo Country". Harrelson grew up in Lebanon, Ohio U.S.A. Meet The Author Born on the 20th of July 1933 at Providence, Rhode Island, USA McCarthy is the third of six children (the eldest son) born to Charles Joseph and Gladys Christina McGrail McCarthy (he has two brothers and three sisters). Originally named Charles (after his father), he renamed himself Cormac after the Irish King. Once dubbed the "Shakespeare of the West", Cormack McCarthy has become the resonant voice of a land in rapid transition. Throughout his ten novels, McCarthy’s unforgettable characters; often outcast, broken people trying to hang on to a sense of honor and freedom no longer celebrated in contemporary America; have captivated the imaginations of millions of readers. He writes about a way of life, an entire way of being, coming to an end in modern times, a theme that comes tumbling to fore in his ninth novel, "No Country For Old Men", as it never has before, via a searing, fast-paced tale of crime and consequences on the Texas-Mexico border in 1980. Following the acclaim for "No Country For Old Men", McCarthy did a turn-about for his tenth and most recent novel, turning to a setting even more stark and Biblical than the New West; a post-apocalyptic world of ash and devastation in which a father and son struggle for survival. Once again, with "The Road", McCarthy’s work was hailed as a savagely beautiful masterpiece and garnered the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. "No Country For Old Men" returned McCarthy to the West Texas setting of his celebrated 'Border Trilogy', a series of three linked novels of mythic high adventure set in Texas and Mexican border towns including: "All The Pretty Horses" (1992 National Book Award winner), which itself became a film directed by Billy Bob Thornton; "The Crossing", the story of a young journeyer to Mexico who attempts to preserve the life of a she-wolf, and "Cities on the Plain", which brought the characters of the two previous stories together later in life. Throughout all of McCarthy’s novels, which also include the apocalyptic Civil War story "Blood Meridian"; and "Suttree", a Faulknerian tale set in 1950s rural Tennessee; landscape has been one his most intriguing major characters, lending each of his stories an astonishing visual impact in the reading alone. He uses the wildness and desolateness of the badlands terrain, and its contrasting terror and beauty, to mirror what his characters are experiencing and add new layers to the storytelling. "In No Country For Old Men", the border itself, in the form of the Rio Grande, becomes a metaphorical crossroads as characters move from one side to the other in the heat of the dizzying chase. His books: The Orchard Keeper (1965), Outer Dark (1968), Child of God (1974), Suttree (1979), Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), Cities of the Plain (1998), No Country for Old Men (2005) and The Road (2006). Synopsis

Llewelyn Moss is hunting Deer. He's usually a crack rifle shot. But on this occassion his aim is slighty off, leaving him to track the fatally wounded beast. It leads him to a gully where pickup truck's are surrounded by a sentry of dead men. In one pickup, the driver is clinging to life. In the rear Moss finds a load of heroin. On the front seat he notices a large black briefcase. It contains two million dollars in cash. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law,in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell Ed Tom can contain. Moss's actions have placed not only his immediate family in jeoardy, but also the lives of innocent law abiding citizens. Realizing the gravity of his actions, Moss leaves town. But powerful, criminal forces want their money back. They send Anton Chigurh, a psychopathic hitman who flips coins for human lives, after him.

The Verdict "The Cohen Brothers strike back with this totally adult thriller/drama that will leave you white knuckled and clutching at your seat. Solid performances from the cast and exceptional cinematography puts a razor sharp edge on this rabid tale of a psycho killer who invites many of his victims to decide whether they live or die by the toss of a coin. FOUR time Goya Award winner Javier Bardem gives the finest performance of his career to date. Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald, Josh Brolin, Tess Harper and Woody Harrelson are rock solid, with all giving faultless performances. An exceptional film. Most Highly Commended. 5 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN" stars .......
Tommy Lee Jones ["U.S. Marshals", "Space Cowboys", "The Missing" and "A Prairie Home Companion"]; Josh Brolin ["Hollow Man", "Into The Blue" and "Grindhouse"]; Woody Harrelson ["Wag the Dog", "The Thin Red Line", "After the Sunset", "North Country" and "A Prairie Home Companion"]; Kelly Macdonald ["Gosford Park", "Nanny McPhee" and "Lassie"]; Garret Dillahunt ["Last Call", "The Believer" and "The Assassination of Jesse James"] and Javier Bardem ["Before Night Falls", "The Dancer Upstairs", "Collateral" and "The Sea Inside"] as Anton Chigurh.
"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN" was .......
directed by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen ["Fargo", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "Paris, I Love You"]; screenplay by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen ["Raising Arizona", "Miller's Crossing", "The Big Lebowski" and "Intolerable Cruelty"]; art direction by John P Goldsmith ["Natural Born Killers", "What Women Want" and "Spider-Man"]; costume design by Mary Zophres ["Any Given Sunday", "Catch Me If You Can", "The Terminal" and "Lions for Lambs"]; production design by Jess Gonchor ["Capote" and "The Devil Wears Prada"]; edited by Roderick Jaynes ["Barton Fink", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "The Ladykillers"]; cinematography by Roger Deakins ["The Shawshank Redemption", "Dead Man Walking", "Thirteen Days", "House of Sand and Fog" and "The Village"]; original music by Carter Burwell ["The Jackal", "Mystery, Alaska", "Before Night Falls", "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Kinsey"]; casting by Ellen Chenoweth ["The Man Who Wasn't There", "Bandits", "Mona Lisa Smile", "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Michael Clayton"]. Who's Who?

Tommy Lee Jones Javier Bardem Josh Brolin Woody Harrelson Kelly Macdonald Garret Dillahunt Tess Harper Barry Corbin Stephen Root Rodger Boyce Beth Grant Ana Reeder Kit Gwin Zach Hopkins

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Sheriff Bell Anton Chigurh Llewelyn Moss Carson Wells Carla Jean Moss Deputy Wendell Loretta Bell Ellis Man Who Hires Wells El Paso Sheriff Agnes(Carla Jean's Mom) Poolside Woman Molly(Sheriff Bell's Secretary) Strangled Deputy

Run Time 121 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2008 - Paramount Pictures - All Rights Reserved ©2007 All Rights Reserved - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - Protected by Australian & International Copyright. Trademark Laws Apply.