Thoughts on No Country For Old Men?

Well deserved Best Picture winner & definitely one of my favs of the 2000s (Zodiac is still my #1 of 2007 but No Country For Old Men is ranked right after it. Just a LOADED year for great films)

Bardem is one of the scariest / most memorable villains of all time in this and glad he got the Oscar for it. Honestly, I can't find a single flaw in this Coen bros' film . Its a damn masterpiece .

10/10

One of the greatest Best Picture winners ever (in my book, eclipsed only by Amadeus and All Quiet on the Western Front, and more or less tied with Birdman in my Top 25 of all time). It's a remarkable exercise in minimalism, flawlessly transposing McCarthy's neo-Biblical style into the cinematic language, and wisely pruning it where necessary. Brolin brings a fantastic old-school swagger that would've made Gary Cooper envious. Bardem is harrowingly good at playing the physical embodiment of doom, acting as more of an act of God (or fate) rather than a human being. Tommy Lee Jones perfectly encapsulates the film's ethos of the old days of good guy/bad guy being obliterated by the morally bankrupt era of corruption and greed. Macdonald (royally snubbed) is quietly heartbreaking, Harrelson magnificent, Dillahunt hilarious, Root, Grant and Gene Jones excellent one-scene wonders, etc. Deakins's work is top-shelf, even better than his Jesse James showboating, and the Coens' expert use at using sound effects in lieu of score amps the tension to staggering proportions.

I still opt for There Will Be Blood as the better film, but how fucking great is it to have two dizzying masterworks come out the same year and by definition, become so inextricably linked to one another? I have said before that Daniel Plainview is the embodiment of the themes of No Country all in one single character, showing that Ed Tom's even more naive than we think because the start of that moral decay started far, far earlier than the entrance of hard drugs into the world.

I still think Barton Fink is their best film, if only because it feels like their most personal film and it takes so many of their cinematic inspirations and perfectly remixes them while giving it that distinct Coen flavor, and to think that it was their palate cleanser after they hit a roadblock in writing Miller's Crossing staggers me even more. No Country is certainly their "most important" movie, and probably has the Coens operating at their absolute zenith, but Fink just edges it out by a hair.

One thing I admire the Coens for is that the final product shows them even pruning their own adaptation of McCarthy from the script. In the scene where Chigurh kills the man who hired Wells and he asks the accountant if he sees him, the script has the accountant nervously replying, "...No?" For me, that added line tips the hand a bit too far, implying that it is the correct answer. But does Chigurh reward him for that, or would he reward him for honesty (as Chigurh is actually the most moral character in the entire film, despite being a coldblooded assassin)? By cutting that one word and leaving it on that silent (except for Beth Grant's dialogue leading into the next scene) extended shot of the accountant and Chigurh staring at each other, it adds so much weight and doom to the exchange.

This is one of those movies that's been so acclaimed and talked about that there's not much to really say anymore. Very good movie, all time great performance from Bardem. I'm not the biggest fan of the ending, not that I wanted a big action finale, I'm just not a fan of movies that sort of just stop rather than end. But other than that it's pretty much perfect.

I also slightly prefer There Will Be Blood, maybe because it "sticks the landing" so to speak. But it's still a fine BP winner and the best one we've had for a long time. It and LOTR are the only recent BP winners that really feel like classics. 

Spoiled indeed.  Assassination of Jesse James is right in that tier as well (my #2 personally), not to mention other great movies such as Eastern Promises, Michael Clayton, Gone Baby Gone, Into the Wild, Lars and the Real Girl, etc...

it's solid, barely makes my top 10 of the year. it kinda swapped w TWBB and how i feel about that, where i think that one is pretty considerably overrated now and this one grew on me. love the pacing.

My favorite Best Picture winner of the 21st century and my favorite Coen Brothers film. I don’t think I have much to add that hasn’t been said by others, but I love it from beginning to end. It’s superbly acted, brutal, and frequently subverts expectations. 2007 brought three of my favorite films of all time: No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Zodiac.

It's a very, very good film. Still, it ain't even in my Top 5 of 2007, so I'm not in that it's an all-timer camp, but damn if it isn't a very, very good film.

i'll have to give it a rewatch as I do not remember it being nearly the masterpiece people seem to claim it is