MIT Lecture Series Committee

Rated R
122 minutes

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No Country for Old Men (2007)

With No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers have found a perfect match in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy. Their adaptation of McCarthy's praised novel is a staggering masterpiece. In this almost impossibly faithful adaptation, the film takes place in a small Texas border town in 1980. Sheriff Bell (a never-been-better Tommy Lee Jones) has ruled the land for years without the use of a gun, but a new brand of reckless lawlessness has taken over his town. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is an innocent Everyman with a devoted wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), but when he stumbles across a drug deal gone deadly and finds two million dollars, he's determined to keep it for himself. There's only one problem. He's being pursued by one of the most amoral, evil psychopaths that the big screen has ever seen. Wearing an absurd haircut and brandishing a pressurized weapon that's used to murder cattle, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) creeps forward on his mission to track Moss down and return the money to its rightful owners to save his own skin. As the tension mounts, the body count begins to rise, confirming Sheriff Bell's inability to battle this new wave of modern brutality. [www.rottentomatoes.com]

No Country for Old Men is 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.
      -- Lou Lumenick, New York Post. Read this review.

2007 Academy Award Nominations: Best Picture (WIN!), Best Directing (Ethan and Joel Coen) (WIN!), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Javier Bardem) (WIN!), Best Adapted Screenplay (WIN!), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound, Best Sound Editing