No Country for Old Men (2007)

Film Title: No Country for Old Men

Released: November 21, 2007

Directed by: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

Written by: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy

Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem & Josh Brolin

Plot: A man stumbles across the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, makes off with $2.4 million in cash and is pursued by a psychotic hitman.

IMDb: 8.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 94/100

My Score: 4/5

The Coen Brothers widely acclaimed adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's award-winning novel, No Country for Old Men is a beautifully shot crime thriller with a tour de force performance by Javier Bardem as psychotic hitman Anton Chigurh. Josh Brolin is an average Texan who comes across the remnants of a Mexican drug deal that has gone sideways, leaving everyone involved either dead or mortally wounded. He also discovers a satchel full of cash and makes off with it. Bardem relentlessly chases him, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, which Tommy Lee Jones, as the local sheriff, must clean up. Co-starring Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, and Barry Corbin, the film is full of beautiful photography from award-winning cinematographer Richard Deakins and strong performances by everyone involved. I especially enjoyed the silence in one of the more tense sequences of the cat- and-mouse chase between Bardem and Brolin, making the situation that much more anxious. A taut and suspenseful neo-western, the film was on over 350 critics' top ten lists and laden with accolades from BAFTA, the Golden Globes, the American Film Institute, and the Screen Actors Guild as well as being nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning four of them, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem.