GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

No Country for Old Men
Miramax Films

No Country for Old Men reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 91 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.9 out of 10
based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 654 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

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 

What The Critics Said

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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
100
Village Voice Scott Foundas
The most measured, classical film of their (Coen Brothers) 23-year career, and maybe the best.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
100
Premiere Glenn Kenny
As stomach-churning a suspense exercise as the cinema has seen since the salad days of Hitchcock.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
100
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Feels positively Greek in its magnitude, a lament about fate, age, time and life.
Read Full Review
100
Boston Globe Ty Burr
The Coens also understand the stark immediacy of this tale, and they visualize it with brilliantly judged details.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
100
Time Richard Schickel
Caught in the movie's grip, you are simply hypnotized by the damned thing.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Strong, evocative storytelling pared to the bone and braced with a sensibility perfectly matched to the material.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
91
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
In the main this is a muscular, exact and thrillingly cool movie.
Read Full Review
91
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.
Read Full Review
90
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.
Read Full Review
90
New York Magazine David Edelstein
It’s a near masterpiece.
Read Full Review
89
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.
Read Full Review
88
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.
Read Full Review
88
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
An eerily quiet, bracingly bloody, and expertly laid-out adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel.
Read Full Review
88
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.
Read Full Review
88
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).
Read Full Review
88
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.
Read Full Review
80
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.
Read Full Review
75
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
It's a hugely entertaining slice of sunbaked Gothic.
Read Full Review
75
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.
Read Full Review
70
Slate Dana Stevens
Maybe part of the problem is that black comedy is a tough genre in which to create a masterpiece.
Read Full Review
70
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.”
Read Full Review
50
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.
Read Full Review
30
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.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 654 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Levi H gave it a10:
Action films are, by definition, hot medium. The design is for the audience to be given all the information they desire and to be taken on a pretty ride. No Country For Old Men defies this by answering nothing. Who is Chigurh? What kind of man is he? Is he even a man at all? The Coen Brother's seem to have a distinct interpretation of the character, yet in keeping with their style they aren't exactly going to spell it out for the audience. This film, for days afterward, will make you think. This film, during it's screen time, will engross you in top notch cinematography, acting, editing, writing, and directing. Coming from a novel I considered largely unfilmable, the Coen's have created something special and unique, as only they could.

Apocalypse Brown gave it a7:
Good film but can somebody explain what on earth happened at the end? It has a very poor narrative, as nobody understood the overall theme.

Rommel A gave it a10:
The movie provides great thrills and awesome acting. The actors know how to play their parts and they play them really well. I really recommend this game anyone!

D C gave it a3:
Good performances, interesting enough characters with a nice tone of its own. I was really enjoying it, feeling the tension build and build and then whoosh the cohens whip the rug out from under you and as you sit there lying on your back going "Hey what the hell happened?" the two brothers pull down their pants and take a nice big steaming dump on your face. While shouting "Ha Ha fuck you consumer, fuck you. You want closure? You want an ending that is in some way satisfying to the viewer? You want to at least have a final denouement between one of the protagonists and the psycho? Fuck you moron eat our filth!!" That's how I felt anyway. A film that could have been great totally destroyed by the most horrendous "bait and switch" I've ever had the misfortune to see. In a word "Disgusting".

K M gave it a9:
I can watch this movie a thousand times and still not get the significance of it, but I still liked it.

James V. gave it a10:
Outstanding film. Reminded me of Apocalypse Now in a broader sense that in the heart of many men lies darkness, with a key difference being that in AN we get a glimpse of Col. Kurtz's inner being while in NCFOM Chigurh's character is opaque and impenetrable. Another parallel to AN is that evil infects all of the characters to some degree -- Moss is undone by his own greed for trying to keep the money instead of turning it in; Chigurh is a psychopath who cannot feel anyone's pain and not even his own; even the good 'ol Sheriff Bell is called out for vanity and retires just when duty calls. Many people complain about ambiguity in the plot, but that is by design; in real life, Good and Evil are rarely so black and white and at times fate and circumstance interfere with justice. The cinematography, the acting and the dialogue are all top drawer. Kept me on the edge of my seat the entire film.

Jack S. gave it a10:
Possibly one of the best films ever made. It's rare that a picture is created with so much philosophical depth and intrigue, yet manages to be so unbelievably entertaining. The Coen Brothers continue to impress the film making industry with their bleak, ingeniously constructed tales; No Country for Old Men only boosts their repertoire. As the final shot abruptly cuts to slow credits, I sat, and I thought. Even when I finally left the theater, the movie just wouldn't leave my mind. It's so deep, so interesting, and so tense. It really just makes you think. How many movies do that nowadays? With all the mindless crap out there, it's refreshing to see a film that will make you really stop and wonder. As great as No Country is, one is able to see its brilliance at its pinnacle after the film is over. A true masterpiece, and completely deserving of its Oscars.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use