No Country for Old Men (film)


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No Country for Old Men

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
Produced by Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
Scott Rudin
Written by Screenplay:
Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
Novel:
Cormac McCarthy
Starring Tommy Lee Jones
Javier Bardem
Josh Brolin
Woody Harrelson
Kelly Macdonald
Music by Carter Burwell
Cinematography Roger Deakins
Editing by Roderick Jaynes
Distributed by Miramax Films (US)
Paramount Vantage (non-US)
Release date(s) United States:
November 9, 2007
(limited)
November 21, 2007
(wide)
Australia:
December 26, 2007
United Kingdom:
January 18, 2008
Running time 122 min.
Country United States
Language English
Spanish
Budget US$25 million
Gross revenue $160,132,665

No Country for Old Men is a 2007 crime thriller film adapted for the screen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin. Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name,[1][2] No Country for Old Men tells the story of a botched drug deal and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama, as three men crisscross each other's paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. The film examines the themes of fate and circumstance the Coen brothers have previously explored in Blood Simple and Fargo.

No Country for Old Men has been highly praised by critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "as good a film as the Coen brothers...have ever made."[3] Guardian journalist John Patterson said the film proved "that 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."[4] The film was honored with numerous awards, garnering three British Academy of Film awards, two Golden Globes, and four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem).

Contents

Plot

Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is arrested by a sheriff's deputy. Chigurh escapes by strangling the arresting deputy with his handcuffs, then steals a car, whose driver he kills with a captive bolt pistol (his signature weapon, which he also uses to break into places by blowing out lock cylinders). Meanwhile, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), is hunting pronghorn near the Rio Grande when he discovers a group of corpses, vehicles and a lone dying Mexican, the aftermath of a drug deal gone awry. He finds two million dollars in a satchel next to a corpse a short distance from the massacre. He steals the money and leaves the Mexican to die but suffers a pang of conscience later that night and returns with water for the dying man. Discovered by returning Mexican gangsters, Moss escapes but is forced to abandon his truck at the site. The next morning the gangsters and Chigurh use the truck's registration number to identify Moss and his residence.

Returning to his trailer Moss places his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) on a bus to her mother's home in Odessa, Texas before leaving town himself, barely missing Chigurh. Chigurh, a professional hitman hired to find the satchel, breaks into the trailer through use of his captive bolt pistol but finds no trace of Moss, only finding out who he is by stealing his phone bill. Chigurh meets up with two men sent by the owners of the money who give him a radio receiver attached to a transponder in the satchel, whereupon Chigurh kills them.

Chigurh uses the receiver to track Moss to a motel in Del Rio, Texas where Moss has hidden the satchel inside an air vent. As he returns to his motel, Moss discovers that the Mexican gangsters have followed him and are waiting to ambush him in his hotel room. Moss rents an adjacent room and retrieves the satchel through the common vent, just as Chigurh bursts into Moss's original room and slaughters the Mexicans. Searching for the satchel, Chigurh notices the vent cover, unscrews it from the wall using a dime, and looks inside before realizing that Moss has escaped with the money.

Using the receiver, Chigurh tracks Moss to a border town hotel, just as Moss discovers the radio transponder hidden in the satchel of money. Moments later, Chigurh arrives, and the two engage in an intense firefight that spills onto the streets. In the aftermath, Moss is severely wounded, but saves himself by crossing the Mexican border on foot and checking into a hospital and throws the satchel over a fence in the process; Chigurh is left with a shotgun wound in his leg that forces him to walk with a limp.

At the Mexican hospital, Moss is met by Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), another operative hired by the drug buyer (Stephen Root). After Moss rejects Wells' offer to save his life, Wells returns to his hotel where Chigurh is waiting for him. After a brief discussion of fate and Chigurh's insanity, Chigurh shoots Wells to death just as Moss calls to talk about Wells' earlier offer. Picking up the phone, Chigurh offers to spare Carla Jean if Moss forfeits the money, although Moss himself would still be killed. Moss angrily rejects, choosing instead to retrieve the satchel and rendezvous with Carla Jean in El Paso, to give her the money and send her out of harm's way.

Carla Jean, worried for Moss's safety, contacts Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and gives him the location of the meet. On the way to the bus station in Odessa, Carla Jean's mother inadvertently reveals the location of the meet to one of the Mexican gangsters in disguise, and, armed with that information, they converge on the motel where Moss is staying. Moss is killed by the Mexicans seconds before Sheriff Bell is able to reach him. Hours later, Carla Jean arrives at the motel and learns of her husband's fate.

After dinner with the local sheriff, Sheriff Bell returns to the now quiet motel and finds that the lock to Moss's hotel room door has been blown out. Chigurh is shown hiding behind the door of a motel room as he observes Bell in the reflection of the empty lock hole. His gun drawn, Bell enters the room where Moss was killed and notices the vent cover has been removed with a dime. Bell leaves without encountering Chigurh.

Days later, Bell visits his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin), an ex-lawman who is wheelchair-bound because a criminal shot him. Bell is planning to retire due to his weariness of the changing times, but Ellis points out that the region has always been violent. Ellis also discusses how the man who left him a paraplegic died in prison. He accuses the despondent Bell of "vanity" in thinking that he could personally make a difference, and adds that no one forced him to sign on as a deputy.

Carla Jean returns home from her mother's funeral to find Chigurh lying in wait for her. Chigurh tells her the pledge he made to Moss to kill her if Moss did not sacrifice himself to spare her and then offers her a chance to save her life by calling a coin toss. Carla Jean refuses to call the coin toss, saying that the choice is ultimately up to him.

Chigurh then leaves the house and is seen on the porch checking the bottom of his boots before driving away. While driving he is hit by a car running a red light; he suffers a compound fracture in his arm, but he is able to walk away before the police and EMS arrive by buying a boy's shirt from him and using it as a sling.

Now retired, Bell reflects on his life choices with his wife (Tess Harper) over breakfast in their home. Bell relates two dreams he had, both involving his deceased father who was also a lawman. Bell tells that in the first dream he lost "some money" that his father had given him; in the second dream, he and his father were riding horses through a snowy mountain pass. His father, who was carrying fire in a horn, quietly passed by Bell, wrapped in a blanket and with his head down, and was "going on ahead...fixin' to make a fire" in the surrounding cold darkness. When Bell got there, his father would be waiting. Bell closes the dream and the movie with, "Then I woke up."

Themes and style

While No Country for Old Men is a "doggedly faithful" adaptation of McCarthy's 2005 novel and its themes, the film also revisits themes which the Coens had explored in their earlier movies Blood Simple and Fargo.[5] The novel's motifs of chance, free-will, and predestination are familiar territory for the Coen brothers, who presented similar threads and tapestries of "fate [and] circumstance" in earlier works including Raising Arizona, which featured another seemingly unkillable maniacal hitman, albeit less serious in tone.[6][7] Numerous critics cited the importance of chance to both the novel and the film, focusing on Chigurh's fate-deciding coin flipping,[8] but noted that the nature of the film medium made it difficult to include the "self-reflective qualities of McCarthy’s novel."[9]

In The Village Voice, Scott Foundas writes that "Like McCarthy, the Coens are markedly less interested in who (if anyone) gets away with the loot than in the primal forces that urge the characters forward... In the end, everyone in No Country for Old Men is both hunter and hunted, members of some endangered species trying to forestall their extinction."[10] Roger Ebert writes that "the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are in the face of implacable injustice."[11]

New York Times critic A.O. Scott points out that Chigurh, Moss, and Bell each "occupy the screen one at a time, almost never appearing in the frame together, even as their fates become ever more intimately entwined."[12]

Variety critic Todd McCarthy describes Chigurh's modus operandi:

“ Death walks hand in hand with Chigurh wherever he goes, unless he decides otherwise ... if everything you've done in your life has led you to him, he may explain to his about-to-be victims, your time might just have come. 'You don't have to do this,' the innocent invariably insist to a man whose murderous code dictates otherwise. Occasionally, however, he will allow someone to decide his own fate by coin toss, notably in a tense early scene in an old filling station marbled with nervous humor.[13] ”

Production

Producer Scott Rudin bought the book rights to McCarthy's novel and suggested a film adaptation to the Coen Brothers, who at the time were attempting to adapt the novel To the White Sea by James Dickey.[14] By August 2005, the Coen Brothers agreed to write and direct a film adaptation of No Country for Old Men, having identified with how the novel provided a sense of place and also how it played with genre conventions. Joel Coen said of the unconventional approach, "That was familiar, congenial to us; we're naturally attracted to subverting genre. We liked the fact that the bad guys never really meet the good guys, that McCarthy did not follow through on formula expectations."[14][15] The Coens also identified the appeal of the novel to be its "pitiless quality". Ethan Coen explained, "That's a hallmark of the book, which has an unforgiving landscape and characters but is also about finding some kind of beauty without being sentimental." The adaptation was to be the second of McCarthy's work, following the 2000 film All the Pretty Horses.[16]

Writing

The brothers kept the script faithful to the book, only pruning the story where necessary.[14] The script was so faithful to the novel that Ethan described the screenwriting process by saying, "[O]ne of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat."[4] A teenage runaway who appeared late in the book and the backstory related to Bell were both removed.[17] Also changed from the source material was Carla Jean Moss' reaction when finally faced with the imposing figure of Chigurh. As Kelly MacDonald explained to CanMag: "The ending of the book is different. She reacts more in the way I react. She kind of falls apart. In the film she's been through so much and she can't lose any more. It's just she's got this quiet acceptance of it."[18]

The writing is also notable for its minimal use of dialogue, relying mostly on imagery and editing to create the film's dramatic tension.[citation needed] Josh Brolin discussed his initial nervousness with having so little dialogue to work with:

I mean it was a fear, for sure, because dialogue that’s what you kind of rest upon as an actor, you know? [...] Drama and all the stuff is all dialogue motivated. You have to figure out different ways to convey ideas. You don’t want to over-compensate because the fear is that you’re going to be boring if nothing’s going on. You start doing this and this and taking off your hat and putting it on again or some bullshit that doesn’t need to be there. So yeah, I was a little afraid of that in the beginning.[19]

Casting

Actors Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones entered talks to join the cast in February 2006.[20] Jones was the first actor to be officially cast in No Country for Old Men. The Coen Brothers felt that Jones fit the role since they wanted to avoid sentimentality and not have the audiences perceive the character to be a Charley Weaver.[14] Praising Tommy Lee Jones' credentials, the Coen brothers said, "He's from San Saba, Texas, not far from where the movie takes place. He's the real thing regarding that region." Joel Coen further outlined the directors' reasons for hiring Tommy Lee Jones in interview with Emanuel Levy:

There are just very, very few people who can carry a role like this one [...] Sheriff Bell is the soul of the movie and also, in a fundamental way, the region is so much a part of Sheriff Bell, so we needed someone who understood it [...] It’s a role that also requires a kind of subtlety that only a really, really great actor can bring to it. Again, the list of these is pretty short, so when you put those two criteria together, you come up with Tommy Lee Jones. Being a Texan, the region is a part of his core.[21]

Josh Brolin joined the cast shortly after in April, prior to the start of production.[22] Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino filmed Brolin's first audition for the movie on a Panavision Genesis camera during lunch while filming Grindhouse. However, Brolin was initially overlooked for the role of Llewelyn. Other actors had been offered the role, including Heath Ledger, who turned down the offer to take time off from acting.[23] According to Brolin, the Coens's only response to the audition tape was, "Who lit it?"[24] Brolin said it was only due to his agents' persistence that he eventually got a callback:

What I found out now was their last casting session, they were focused on a couple of actors. They called me the night before and they said, basically, no harm, no foul. ‘Leave us alone, have him come down.’ I studied a few scenes and I came down and I met them, and there was really no reaction in the meeting. I walked out thinking, ‘It was great meeting the Coens. I’m a big fan. That’s cool.’ And by the time I got home I found out they wanted me to do it.[19]

Brolin broke his collarbone in a motorcycle accident a few days before filming was due to begin; however he and his doctor lied about the extent of his injury to the Coens and they let him continue in the role.[25]

The Coens later wrote a short tongue-in-cheek piece for Esquire magazine called "Josh Brolin, the Casting Mistake of the Year," in which they claimed to have believed that they had cast James Brolin in the role of the aging Vietnam vet, and upon realizing their mistake were forced to reset the movie in the year 1980, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to recast Tommy Lee Jones' role with Shia LaBeouf.[26]

Kelly Macdonald's agent originally wasn't sure she was right for the part of Moss' wife, and Macdonald is reported as having to "fight for the role".[27] Her persistence paid off though, as she was nominated for a BAFTA for best supporting actress.

Shooting

The project was a co-production between Miramax Films and Paramount's classics-based division in a 50/50 partnership, and production was scheduled for May 2006 in New Mexico and Texas. With a total budget of $25 million, production was slated to take place in the cities of Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as in the state of Texas. Filmmakers estimated spending between $12 and $17 million of the budget in New Mexico.[28] A movie set of a border checkpoint was built at the intersection of Interstate 25 and New Mexico State Highway 65.[29] The bulk of the film was shot in New Mexico, and primarily there in Las Vegas, which doubled as the border towns of Eagle Pass and Del Rio, Texas. The U.S.-Mexico border crossing bridge was actually a freeway overpass in Las Vegas. Other scenes were filmed around Marfa and Sanderson in West Texas, and the scene in the town square was filmed in Piedras Negras, Coahuila in Mexico.[30]

Cinematographer Roger Deakins, collaborating with the Coen Brothers for the ninth time, spoke of his approach to the film's look: "The big challenge on No Country for Old Men is making it very realistic, to match the story. It's early days, but I'm imagining doing it very edgy and dark, and quite sparse. Not so stylized."[31]

Directing

One of the Coen brothers' influences was the works of director Sam Peckinpah. In an interview for The Guardian, they said "Hard men in the south-west shooting each other – that's definitely Sam Peckinpah's thing. We were aware of those similarities, certainly."[4] In an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Coens discussed choreographing and directing the film's violent scenes: " 'That stuff is such fun to do,' the brothers chime in at the mention of their penchant for blood-letting. 'Even Javier would come in by the end of the movie, rub his hands together and say, 'OK, who am I killing today?' adds Joel. 'It's fun to figure out,' says Ethan. 'It's fun working out how to choreograph it, how to shoot it, how to engage audiences watching it.'"[32]

Josh Brolin discussed the brothers' directing style in interview, saying that the Coens "Only really say what needs to be said. They don’t sit there as directors and manipulate you and go into page after page to try to get you to a certain place. They may come in and say one word or two words, so that was nice to be around in order to feed the other thing. What should I do right now? I’ll just watch Ethan go humming to himself and pacing. Maybe that’s what I should do, too.'"[19]

Musical score and sound

Unusual for a thriller, the Coens worked against Hollywood convention and minimized the score used in the film, leaving large sections devoid of music. The concept was Ethan's, who persuaded a skeptical Joel to go with that idea. There is some music in the movie, scored by the Coens' longtime composer, Carter Burwell, but after finding that "most musical instruments didn’t fit with the minimalist sound sculpture he had in mind [...] he used singing bowls, standing metal bells traditionally employed in Buddhist meditation practice that produce a sustained tone when rubbed." The movie contains a "mere" 16 minutes of music, with several of those in the end credits. Sound editing and effects were provided by another longtime Coens collaborator, Skip Lievsay, who used a mixture of emphatic sounds (gun shots) and ambient noise (engine noise, prairie winds) in the mix. The cattle gun used by Chigurh was in fact voiced by a pneumatic nail gun.[33]

Title

The title of the book and the film is taken from the opening line of 20th-century Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats' poem "Sailing to Byzantium." [34]

Cast and characters

  • Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell: A laconic, soon-to-retire small-town sheriff. In September 2008, Jones announced that he was going to sue Paramount Pictures for $10 million, which he claims he is owed for his work on the film. Jones claimed he was not paid the correct bonuses and had expenses wrongly deducted. [35]
  • Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss: A welder and Vietnam veteran who flees with two million dollars in drug money that he finds in an open field in Texas.
  • Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh: A sociopathic assassin hired to recover the drug money. The character was a recurrence of the "Unstoppable Evil" archetype found in the Coen Brothers' work, though the brothers wanted to avoid one-dimensionality, particularly a comparison to The Terminator.[17] The Coen Brothers sought to cast someone "who could have come from Mars" to avoid a sense of identification. The brothers introduced the character in the beginning of the film in a manner similar to the opening of the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.[14] Chigurh has been perceived as a "modern equivalent of Death from Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal".[36] Chigurh's distinctive look was derived from a 1979 photo from a book supplied by Tommy Lee Jones which featured photos of brothel patrons on the Texas-Mexico border.[37] Describing his "extraordinary moptop haircut," Bardem said, "You don't have to act the haircut. The haircut acts by itself." He also reportedly said after seeing himself with the new hairdo for the first time, "Oh no, now I won't get laid for two months." Bardem signed on because he had been a Coens fan ever since he saw their debut, Blood Simple.[38]
  • Kelly Macdonald as Carla Jean Moss: Llewelyn Moss' wife. Despite having severe misgivings about her husband's plans to keep the money, she still supports him. Macdonald said that what attracted her to the character of Moss was that she "wasn't obvious. She wasn't your typical trailer trash kind of character. At first you think she's one thing and by the end of the film, you realize that she's not quite as naïve as she might come across"[18]
  • Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells: A cocky bounty hunter and retired colonel hired to intercept Chigurh and recover the drug money.
  • Tess Harper as Loretta Bell: Bell's wife, provides reassurance in his darker moods.
  • Barry Corbin as Ellis: A retired sheriff shot in the line of duty and now wheelchair-bound. He acts as a straight-talking sounding board to his nephew, Bell.
  • Beth Grant as Agnes: Carla Jean's mother and the mother-in-law of Moss. She provides a little comic relief despite the fact that she is dying from "the cancer".
  • Stephen Root as Man who hires Wells: A mysterious figure who apparently was involved in the financing of the drug deal and the search for the money. He hired Wells, Chigurh and the Mexicans.
  • Gene Jones as Thomas Thayer: Elderly rural gas station clerk with good fortune as his call on Anton's coin flip saves his life.
  • Brandon Smith as INS official: Stern guard in sunglasses who lets Moss through the border once he learns he was in Nam.

Release

Theatrical run

No Country for Old Men premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2007.[39] The film commercially opened in limited release in 28 theaters in the United States on November 9, 2007, grossing $1,226,333 over the opening weekend. The film expanded to a wide release in 860 theaters in the United States on November 21, 2007, grossing $7,776,773 over the first weekend. The film subsequently increased the number of theaters to 2,037.[40] The film opened in Australia on December 26, 2007, and in the United Kingdom (limited release) and Ireland on January 18, 2008.[41] As of March 9, 2008, the film has grossed $72,659,000 domestically (United States).[40]

Home media

Buena Vista Home Entertainment released the movie on DVD and in the high definition Blu-ray format on March 11, 2008 in the US. The only extras are three behind–the–scenes featurettes.[42]

The Region 2 DVD (courtesy of Paramount) was released on June 2. If purchased from Play.com the DVD comes with a set of limited edition art cards. HMV is selling the DVD in an exclusive Steelbook case. As had been previously announced, the film was released on Blu-Ray Disc in the UK on September 8, 2008.

Reception

As of October 22, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes recorded that 199 of 211 critics gave the film positive reviews,[43] while another review aggregator, Metacritic, records an average score of 91%, based on 37 reviews.[44] The film was widely discussed as a possible candidate for several Oscars,[45][46][47] before going on to receive eight nominations, eventually winning four Academy Awards in 2008. Javier Bardem, in particular, has received considerable praise for his performance in the film. Roger Ebert gave the movie a four star review saying that it was "a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate."[48] Walter Chaw of Film Freak Central also praised the film as an effective adaptation of the source novel, declaring "...the Coens have distilled the essence of McCarthy's gash-deep nostalgia for the illusory, ephemeral past... and packaged it in the very best moments of their own well of extraordinary visions".[49] Two minority, dissenting voices were Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader) and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Stephen Hunter (The Washington Post). Rosenbaum, while admiring the film's aesthetics, questioned its moral culpability: for him, the Coens expend great energy on depicting horror, while encouraging us to "hypocritically shake our heads at the sadness of it all".[50] Hunter also acknowledged the Coens's film craft, but "just [didn't] like it very much": "Nobody goes to the movies for the irony. They go for the satisfaction."[51]

David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz both gave the film five stars. Stratton remarked "this magnificent film represents the best work the Coen Brothers have done since Fargo. Like that movie classic, this is a cold-blooded thriller with a darkly humorous edge" and "Hitchcock wouldn’t have done the suspense better." Pomeranz said "it resonates within me. It's got such a sense of place and language."[52] Time magazine's Richard Corliss named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #1. Corliss praised Bardem’s performance as “mesmerizing” and “astonishing”, and the film as “dry, funny, beautifully acted, thrillingly cinematic.”[53] Corliss’ fellow Time writer Richard Schickel ranked the film #2 on his own Top 10 list, saying that the film returned the Coen brothers “to their best emotional territory of Fargo and Miller's Crossing, a place where comic innocence and unmediated violence explosively coexist. You don't know whether to laugh or cry, but you cannot avert your eyes from the resulting chaos.”[54]

Reviews

Top ten lists

The film appeared on more critics' top ten lists (354) than any other film of 2007, and was more critics' #1 film (90) than any other.[55] Some of the notable critics' placement of No Country for Old Men are:[56]

Awards and nominations

Award Category Winner/Nominee Won
Academy Awards Best Director Joel and Ethan Coen YesY
Best Picture Scott Rudin, Joel and Ethan Coen YesY
Best Screenplay – Adapted Joel and Ethan Coen YesY
Best Supporting Actor Javier Bardem YesY
Best Cinematography Roger Deakins NoN
Best Film Editing Roderick Jaynes NoN
Best Sound Editing Skip Lievsay NoN
Best Sound Mixing Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff, and Peter Kurland NoN

No Country for Old Men was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture.[47] Additionally, Javier Bardem won Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role; the Coen Brothers won Achievement in Directing (Best Director) and Best Adapted Screenplay. Other nominations included Best Film Editing (the Coen Brothers as Roderick Jaynes), Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.[59] "Roderick Jaynes" is a pseudonym for the Coen Brothers, who edit their own movies. If the film had won the Best Editing Oscar, it would not have been accepted by anyone, because the brothers will not publicly say that they are Mr. Jaynes.

The film was also nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, winning two at the 65th Golden Globe Awards.[60] Javier Bardem won Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture and the Coen Brothers won Best Screenplay – Motion Picture. The film was also nominated for Best Motion Picture – Drama, and Best Director (Coen Brothers). Earlier in 2007 it was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.[61] The Screen Actors Guild gave a nomination nod to the cast for its "Outstanding Performance".[62] Also, the film won top honors on January 26, 2008 at the Directors Guild of America Awards for Joel and Ethan Coen. The film was nominated for nine Orange British Academy Film Awards's in 2008 and won in three categories; Joel and Ethan Coen winning the award for Best Director, Roger Deakins winning for Best Cinematography and Javier Bardem winning for Best Supporting Actor.[63]

Consonant with the positive critical response, No Country for Old Men received widespread formal recognition from numerous North American critics' associations (New York Film Critics Circle, Toronto Film Critics Association, Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association, National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Online, Chicago Film Critics Association, Boston Society of Film Critics, Austin Film Critics Association, and San Diego Film Critics Society).[64][65][66][67][68] The American Film Institute listed it as an AFI Movie of the Year for 2007, and the Australian Film Critics Association and Houston Film Critics Society both voted it best film of 2007.[69]

References

  1. ^ Thompson, Gary (November 9, 2007). "Creep in the heart of Texas". Philadelphia Daily News. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
  2. ^ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (November 7, 2007). "No Country for Old Men". EW.com. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
  3. ^ Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times, November 8, 2007.
  4. ^ a b c Patterson, John (2007-12-21). "'We've killed a lot of animals'" Film/Interviews. Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-12-27.
  5. ^ Stratton, David. "No Country for Old Men interview". At the Movies.
  6. ^ Weitner, Sean (November 14, 2007). "Review of No Country For Old Men". Flak Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-12-21.
  7. ^ "Both book and movie offer glimpses of a huge, mysterious pattern that we and the characters can't quite see — that only God could see, if He hadn't given up and gone home." Burr, Ty (November 9, 2007). "The Coen brothers' cat and mouse chase in the sweet land of liberty". The Boston Globe. Retrieved on 2007-12-21.
  8. ^ McCarthy, Todd (May 18, 2007). "No Country for Old Men: Cannes Film Festival Review". Variety.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-21.
  9. ^ Morefield, Kenneth R. "Christian Spotlight on the Movies: No Country for Old Men". Christian Spotlight. Retrieved on 2007-12-21.
  10. ^ Scott Foundas, 'Badlands', Village Voice, November 6, 2007.
  11. ^ Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times, November 8, 2007.
  12. ^ Scott, A. O. (2007-11-09), "He Found a Bundle of Money, And Now There's Hell to Pay", New York Times: Performing Arts/Weekend Desk (1), http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/movies/09coun.html 
  13. ^ McCarthy, Todd (2007-05-28), "No Country for Old Men (Movie review)", Variety 407 (2): 19, http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=cannes2007&jump=review&reviewid=VE1117933677&cs=1 
  14. ^ a b c d e Kenneth Turan (2007-05-18). "Coens' Brutal Brilliance Again on Display", Los Angeles Times. 
  15. ^ Michael Fleming (2005-08-28). "Rudin books tyro novel", Variety. Retrieved on 23 December 2007. 
  16. ^ Nicholas Addison Thomas (2005-10-09). "A mesmerizing tale of desperation", The Free Lance-Star. 
  17. ^ a b Michael Phillips (2007-05-21). "Coen brothers revisit Unstoppable Evil archetype", Chicago Tribune. 
  18. ^ a b Topel, Fred. "Kelly MacDonald on No Country for Old Men". CanMag.
  19. ^ a b c Murray, Rebecca. "Josh Brolin Discusses No Country for Old Men". about.com.
  20. ^ Michael Fleming (2006-02-01). "'Country' time for Coens", Variety. Retrieved on 23 December 2007. 
  21. ^ "No Country for Old Men: Joel and Ethan Coen Interview". Emanuel Levy.
  22. ^ Michael Fleming (2006-08-26). "Coens' 'Country' man", Variety. Retrieved on 23 December 2007. 
  23. ^ No Country for Old Men (2007) - Trivia, Internet Movie Database
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  25. ^ "Josh Brolin talks No Country for Old Men". About.com. Retrieved on November 27 2007.
  26. ^ Coen, Joel and Ethan. "Josh Brolin, the Casting Mistake of the Year". Esquire Magazine.
  27. ^ Kelly Macdonald: No Country for Old Men video interview
  28. ^ David Miles (2006-04-14). "Coen Brothers Coming To N.M.", The Santa Fe New Mexican. 
  29. ^ Eddie Moore (2006-06-29). "Make-Believe Border", Albuquerque Journal. 
  30. ^ Rogers, Troy. "Joel & Ethan Coen — No Country for Old Men Interview". Deadbolt.com. Retrieved on November 26 2007.
  31. ^ Tim Robey (2006-02-10). "At home on the range", The Daily Telegraph. 
  32. ^ "In for the Kill".
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