[rating=5]

The Coen Bros in Peak Form…

The brothers have done it again. Even a mediocre Coen film, such as “The Ladykillers” or “Intolerable Cruelty” is above-average, always impeccably shot, directed and acted. When they fire on all cylinders, they are unbeatable. Such were the cases with “Miller’s Crossing”, the best film of 1990; “Fargo”, the best film of 1997; and now “No Country for Old Men”, the best film of 2007.

Based on prolific writer Cormac McCarthy’s transcendent novel, the film, like its source, is a meditation on good vs. evil, masqueraded as a thriller. It is told in a brutal, laconic style that is uncompromising in its intensity.

A man (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon a couple of dead bodies while hunting out in the Texan desert. They all have bullet-holes, guns; he finds drugs; the discovery leads him to finding the money as well. A lot of money: more than enough to make sure he and his wife (Kelly McDonald) can get the hell out of their trailer. The only problem is, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), the personification of all senseless evil, is on his trail. And on Chigurh’s trail is an honest sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), as well as a sleazy bounty hunter (Woody Harrelson).

All the actors shine, particularly Bardem. The scenes where he asks his victims to flip a coin to determine whether or not he kills them are electric. There is nothing in his dark eyes, no soul, no remnants of human feeling… Chigurh is a merciless creature, functioning purely on a ‘kill-or-be-killed’ basis. Life means nothing to him, perhaps not even his own.

While Javier Bardem owns the screen, the rest of the cast is uniformly excellent. Josh Brolin mesmerizes with his intensity in an almost-speechless role. Woody Harrelson’s part is small, albeit memorable. And Tommy Lee Jones, a true screen veteran, holds his own as the ageing sheriff who confronts his helplessness against contemporary evil, evil that has no reasoning beyond the flip of a coin. He’s seen it all, and yet he still wonders why. The experience is in his wrinkly eyes.

The Coen brothers sure keep the pace going throughout the film. The sustained suspense is unbearable. There are sequences of such intensity they will make your rip off the edge of your seats from clutching them so tight. But there is also unexpected lyricism, as when genuinely good – maybe flawed in their own ways, but at least human – folk encounter the unspeakable terror that is Anton Chigurh, or when the sheriff contemplates the futility of their efforts against something bigger, more powerful than they could ever handle.

“No Country for Old Men” is seemingly simple but rather existential – it sneaks up on you, instead of hammering its messages into your head. It’s the best kind of morality play. Like with their own “Fargo”, the Coen’s have made a film-lover’s paradise.