No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers form “a marriage made in heaven or, more likely, in hell,” said Andrew Sarris in The New York Observer. Following McCarthy’s 2005 novel almost scene for scene, Ethan and Joel Coen, who share writing and directing cred
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
No Country for Old Men
Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen (R)
Good and evil meet in a showdown in the American West.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
****
Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers form “a marriage made in heaven or, more likely, in hell,” said Andrew Sarris in The New York Observer. Following McCarthy’s 2005 novel almost scene for scene, Ethan and Joel Coen, who share writing and directing credits, have contrived a staggeringly beautiful, stark, and lonely portrait of the changing face of the American West. No Country for Old Men is a “densely woven crime story” about three men in a drawn-out chase through West Texas in 1980, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Josh Brolin plays a welder who finds $2 million and decides to keep it. Tommy Lee Jones is the sheriff on Brolin’s tail, while Javier Bardem, looking like a “lost Beatle from hell,” is a sociopathic killer who wants his money back. Like McCarthy, the Coens use “familiar elements of American pop culture and features of particular American landscapes to create elaborate and hermetic worlds.” Their perilous comical sense has always teetered on the perverse, and here they “amplify the material’s dark, rueful humor” as well as its allegorical elements. The Coens play with fate and circumstance to break all the rules of the Western, said Larry McMurtry in Newsweek. No Country is a morality tale in which all the characters are ultimately equally culpable. It seems to subscribe to “that old cowboy maxim: ‘There ain’t a horse that can’t be rode, there ain’t a man that can’t be throw’d.’”
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
-
What to know when filing a hurricane insurance claim
The Explainer A step-by-step to figure out what insurance will cover and what else you can do beyond filing a claim
By Becca Stanek Published
-
How fees impact your investment portfolio — and how to save on them
The Explainer Even seemingly small fees can take a big bite out of returns
By Becca Stanek Published
-
Enemy without
Cartoons
By The Week Staff Published