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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

No Country for Old Men

EMAILPRINTMiramax Films

No Country for Old Men reviews
91
6.9 User Score:

Movie Info

Genre(s): Adventure  |  Crime  |  Drama  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Ethan Coen
Joel Coen

Directed by: Ethan Coen
Joel Coen

Release Date:
Theatrical: November 9, 2007
DVD: March 11, 2008

Running Time: 122 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

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)

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.

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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.

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100

Village Voice Scott Foundas

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

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

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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.

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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.

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100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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

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100

Boston Globe Ty Burr

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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100

Time Richard Schickel

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

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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.

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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.

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100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

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

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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.

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91

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

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

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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.

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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.

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90

New York Magazine David Edelstein

It’s a near masterpiece.

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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.

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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.

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88

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

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

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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75

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's a hugely entertaining slice of sunbaked Gothic.

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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.

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70

Slate Dana Stevens

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

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 675 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jacob E. gave it a9:
The best movie of the 2007. However, it was strange to have the main character part almost split in threes for Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, and Javier Bardem.

Sam gave it a0:
I saw this movie because of all the hype surrounding it and needless to say i was disappointed. It was too long, violent and slow in its execution and left me puzzled and disappointed.

Herb B.w gave it a6:
If the ability to create intense feelings makes a movie great then this is a great movie. However, the feelings created are that human life has no value and the world is incredibly bleak. Chills one to the bone.

Zac H. gave it a0:
Critics like boring movies this is one of them but the ending is no joke the worst ending to a movie of all time it ends with the cop talking about his dream.

P B gave it an8:
Gripping and tense throughout, I found myself engrossed in the plot. The only disappointment was the painfully realistic ending. I felt they should have made it more apparent that the Sheriff was the main protagonist, which would have made the ending less peculiar. I felt I had to do some research to fully understand the decisions made in terms of plot, as the story motifs are a bit lost in translation as a result of film adaptation. In terms of screenplay, it was a incredibly shot and acted film that I enjoyed a great deal.

Vermin D gave it a7:
If you think reality TV is cool (every emotion vocalised, contrived confrontation in everything, no use for self respect/restraint), then this movie probably isn’t for you. If you require an explosion/gun fight/different camera angle every 0.5 of a second, this movie also isn’t for you. It’s not a perfect film, but I liked it. The Chigurh character’s slow, relentless approach to the task in hand had more menace to it than’s been present on the big screen for a long time. Will his bolt gun and cylinder of compressed air become as familiar as Hannibal L’s face mask? If should do, because he’s every bit as frightening as the good doctor.

Christos M gave it a10:
There's a fragile allegory lurking behind the scenes of this so called,alternative western and it's that of a human world loosing it's humanity,drifting away from values and ideals,surrendering to the fascinating corruption of money,violence and lust of power.In this pitch-dark universe of vulgarity,killers like Anton Chigurh rule supreme and the few humane existences left,like Sheriff Llewelyn Moss,struggle to proove humanity's evil urges are not native and spontaneous,though facts tend to proove them wrong.Hollywood endings have no space in such films!

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