2007 film by Ethan and Joel Coen
No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American neo-Western crime thriller film written, directed, produced, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen, based on Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin, the film is set in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas, United States. The film revisits the themes of fate, conscience, and circumstance that the Coen brothers had explored in the films Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), and Fargo (1996). It follows three main characters: Llewelyn Moss (Brolin), a Vietnam War veteran and welder who stumbles upon a large sum of money in the desert, Anton Chigurh (Bardem), a hitman who is sent to recover the money, and Ed Tom Bell (Jones), a sheriff investigating the crime. The film also stars Kelly Macdonald as Moss's wife, Carla Jean, and Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells, a bounty hunter seeking Moss and the return of the money.
No Country for Old Men premiered in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on May 19. The film became a commercial success, grossing $171 million worldwide against a budget of $25 million. Critics praised the Coens' direction and screenplay and Bardem's performance, and the film was heavily awarded, winning four Academy Awards (including Best Picture), three BAFTAs, and two Golden Globes. The American Film Institute listed it as an AFI Movie of the Year, and the National Board of Review selected it as the best of 2007. To date, it is the last Western film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture (the others being Cimarron in 1931, Dances with Wolves in 1990, and Unforgiven in 1992).
No Country for Old Men was considered one of the best films of 2007, and many regard it as the Coen brothers' magnum opus. It has since been widely recognized as one of the greatest films of the 2000s and 21st century. The Guardian's John Patterson wrote: "the Coens' technical abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based Western classicism reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, are matched by few living directors", and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said that it is "a new career peak for the Coen brothers" and "as entertaining as hell". In 2024, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.