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No Country for Old Men
Miramax Films


7.0

based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 600 votes
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Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong graphic violence and some language

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, and Kelly Macdonald

The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. The story begins when Llewelyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and 2 million dollars in cash are still in the back. 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, can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers--in particular, a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives--the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning's headline. (Miramax)

GENRE(S):	Adventure \| Crime \| Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Ethan Coen Joel Coen
DIRECTED BY:	Ethan Coen Joel Coen
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 11, 2008 Theatrical: November 9, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	122 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel is an indisputably great movie, at this point the year's very best.

100

Variety Todd McCarthy

A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor, No Country for Old Men reps a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent.

100

Village Voice Scott Foundas

The most measured, classical film of their (Coen Brothers) 23-year career, and maybe the best.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Many of the scenes in No Country for Old Men are so flawlessly constructed that you want them to simply continue, and yet they create an emotional suction drawing you to the next scene. Another movie that made me feel that way was "Fargo." To make one such film is a miracle. Here is another.

100

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The movie is true to its own fierce vision and it's the better for it. I haven't seen a stronger or better American movie all year.

100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

The ultimate vision here is of a hard world in which civilization is the aberration, and the things we fear are always waiting for an excuse to make life normal again.

100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

As stomach-churning a suspense exercise as the cinema has seen since the salad days of Hitchcock.

100

The New York Times A.O. Scott

No Country for Old Men is purgatory for the squeamish and the easily spooked. For formalists -- those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design -- it’s pure heaven.

100

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

If watching movie violence is cathartic, then this film amounts to heavy therapy. It's much more than that, however. This is the best film the Coen brothers have done since their glory days of "Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski," maybe the best they've done, period.

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Feels positively Greek in its magnitude, a lament about fate, age, time and life.

100

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The Coens also understand the stark immediacy of this tale, and they visualize it with brilliantly judged details.

100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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. That's because No Country escorts you through a world so pitilessly bleak, "you put your soul at hazard," as one character says, to be part of it.

100

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The Coen brothers adaptation is impeccable, a perfect mirror of McCarthy's prose – sparse, suspenseful, probing and profoundly disturbing.

100

New York Post Lou Lumenick

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.

100

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

A return to form for the Coen Brothers and, while I feel the film will annoy and frustrate the masses, it will be looked back upon as one of the truly great movies of the first part of this new decade.

100

Time Richard Schickel

Caught in the movie's grip, you are simply hypnotized by the damned thing.

100

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A model of pitch and modulation and craft. For two hours, the Coens hold you in their grip so tightly that for long stretches it feels a little hard to breathe.

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

No Country for Old Men is about the kind of amoral madness that can sweep across a country and redefine a landscape. It's so admirably lean and sinewy that it deserves not merely a rave review but a Johnny Cash song about matter-of-fact killings in shady hotels and sun-scoured landscapes.

100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Strong, evocative storytelling pared to the bone and braced with a sensibility perfectly matched to the material.

100

Empire Ian Nathan

Violent, poetic, gripping, thrilling and blackly funny: that’ll be the Coens doing what they do best then. Now with added humanity.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

In the main this is a muscular, exact and thrillingly cool movie.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The breath of cinematic life, though, the sensibility, the energy, belong to Joel and Ethan Coen, and this is their stirring success.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

It's the most ambitious and impressive Coen film in at least a decade, featuring the flat, sun-blasted landscapes of west Texas -- spectacularly shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins -- and an eerily memorable performance by Javier Bardem, in a Ringo Starr haircut.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

It’s a near masterpiece.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The adaptation by Joel and Ethan Coen (both co-credited as writer and director) of McCarthy's as-if-written-for-the-screen No Country for Old Men becomes a marvelous meld of narrative faithfulness and pre-established sensibilities.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If the structure is a tad out of whack, "No Country" does not lack for action or suspense. Some of the scenes of Chigurh's stalking of Moss are nearly unbearably tense. Bring your worry beads.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

An eerily quiet, bracingly bloody, and expertly laid-out adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The Coen brothers have fashioned a wry and riveting hybrid of a drama, Western, crime thriller and action film that is as powerful and thought-provoking as it is genre-bending.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

As pure craftsmanship, No Country for Old Men is as good as we’ve ever gotten from Joel and Ethan Coen. Only “Fargo” is more satisfying (it’s also a comedy, which this one isn’t).

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It’s mostly an off-kilter road trip that accomplishes what the Coens do best - seamlessly merging drama, violence, and quirky humor into a whole.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

The Coens' typically superior filmmaking sustains the electrifying mood for most of the picture, but they are undone by being too faithful to the source novel by Cormac McCarthy.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's a hugely entertaining slice of sunbaked Gothic.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The Coen brothers have never really accepted the idea that a movie has to have a plot. Offbeat characters, sure. Oblique dialogue that sounds meaningful and occasionally is so, absolutely. Eye-catching cinematography and a subtle, mood-reinforcing soundtrack, no question. Irony layered on thickly as cheese in good lasagna, yes. But a narrative that makes sense from end to end? Well, one doesn't have room for everything.

Slate Dana Stevens

Maybe part of the problem is that black comedy is a tough genre in which to create a masterpiece.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Beyond question a return to the dark, simmering days of their best work, in “Blood Simple” and “Miller’s Crossing.”

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

I appreciate No Country for Old Men for the skill in the film craft. I understand No Country for Old Men for its penetrating disquisition on narrative conventions and its heroic will in subverting them. I admire No Country for Old Men for the way it tightens its grip as it progresses, taking us deeper and deeper into a hellish world. I just don't like it very much.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A very well-made genre exercise, but I can’t understand why it’s been accorded so much importance, unless it’s because it strokes some ideological impulse.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 600 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Simon B gave it a4:
Being left out on the loop. This is what this movie is all about. You watch a movie and for some reason, it feels like it's been going on for hours already. Some dude starts killing people just because he feels like it, never seems to be found by the police... Okay, I can dig it. Lots of movies have psychotic murderers never being caught by the police. Now another guy finds a bunch of bodies, is pursued by unknown assailants... Then a sheriff comes up, asking stupid questions with his assistant... Then the killer dude called SHEEGURR kills some more people... Money's being tossed about. People are being fooled in to take money, then some Mexican guys show up and seduce this girl's ma... What the fuck?! This movie doesn't make any sense. It's kind of like watching a depressing version of American Psycho, with no music, no fun catch-phrases. Just a stoic antagonist which the movie seems to root for all the way. The only character that you want to attach yourself with gets killed before the end in the most degrading fashion... Then the sheriff becomes the main protagonist and all he has to do is go retire and talk about his dreams? Total. Rip. Off.

david c gave it a7:
Okay, the beginning of this film is fantastic, if your into action you'll love it, if your into drama you'll it, whatever genre your into you'll love it. the middle slows down and i thought a few explanation scenes should have been put in, but it was still acceptable. now then i accepted the middle part because i thought the end would be tremendous, but the only thing i can compare it to is winning the lottery and then going to cash the check to find out its a joke. it really is that much of a let down (i nearly cried). all in all, the acting was very good but 60% of the film was a let down.

Adam A gave it an8:
This movie was so close to perfection and immortality, yet it fell somewhat short at the end. A movie should be complicated, but never leave a viewer confused. I watched the ending 3 times, and read a synopsis, and I still don't understand it. They spent all the time building it up, but never made a climax. The movie, although a beautiful piece of modern film, is broken.

Loccus D. gave it a5:
This is the movie all the critics are having a fit about? Solid performances, but one of the slowest paced and boring movies I've seen in recent memory.

June K. gave it an8:
Looking forward to the sequel. Too many unanswered questions. Such as where is the money? How did the anti-hero die? Did he really die or did the sheriff let him go away with his wife?

Adam C gave it a9:
Wow, great movie. I can't believe so many people voted it low. To all of those who did: not everything is spoon fed to you, I realize it is kind of difficult, but use your mind. Although the background on Bell could have been better, coming from someone who hadn't read the book, just thinking about what happened in the movie, and the point the movie gets across is pretty amazing. I know it won't fit everyone's viewing style, but seeing it knowing that the outcome isn't just good over evil, will make the movie so much better to you. Overall, excellent movie. Very well done.

Tony B. gave it a6:
For all of its brilliant individual scenes, superb acting, cinematography, editing, production design and sound recording, this is one of the more overrated films of recent memory. The ending, far too abrupt for its own good, makes little sense. Did any of the critics who were so ecstatic about it, and often so pretentious in their praise, realize that for the plot to work, we have to assume that most of the population of southwestern Texas is deaf, blind or both?

No Country for Old Men Miramax Films

No Country for Old Men
Miramax Films