| | | |There Are No Clean Getaways.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 2.35:1, Dolby Digital (5.1), French, Spanish, Subtitled
Acclaimed filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen deliver their most gripping and ambitious film yet in this sizzling and supercharged action-thriller. When a man stumbles on a bloody crime scene, a pickup truck loaded with heroin, and two million dollars in irresistible cash, his decision to take the money sets off an unstoppable chain reaction of violence. Not even West Texas law can contain it. Based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy, and featuring an acclaimed cast led by Tommy Lee Jones, this gritty game of cat and mouse will take you to the edge of your seat and beyond - right up to its heart-stopping final act.
"As stomach-churning a suspense exercise as the cinema has seen since the salad days of Hitchcock." Glenn Kenny, Premiere
"...the best film the Coen brothers have done since their glory days of "Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski," maybe the best they've done, period." Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
"An intense, nihilistic thriller as well as a model of implacable storytelling..." Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"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
"...an indisputably great movie..." Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"The most measured, classical film of their (Coen Brothers) 23-year career, and maybe the best." Scott Foundas, The Village Voice
"A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking...a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent." Todd McCarthy, Variety
Editor's Note
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.The most striking thing about the Coen Brothers' thriller is their masterly use of silence to create an almost unbearable level of tension. Cinematographer Roger Deakins is once again at the top of his game, beautifully capturing this stark and lonely world. The well-rounded cast is clearly excited to be a part of such a stellar production--particularly Bardem, whose Chigurh is a freakishly mysterious monster, and is certain to haunt viewers long after the final credit has rolled. In a career filled with striking achievements, this might very well be the Coen Brothers' finest. It is filmmaking at its best.
| Features | Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Featurettes: Working With The Coens - Reflections Of Cast & Crew, The Making Of No Country For Old Men, & Diary Of A Country Sheriff | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: French, Spanish |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | No Country For Old Men - DVD Review By: Scott Gwin - Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 3/10/2008 9:48 PM | | No Country For Old Men, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel and the latest collaboration by the Coen brothers, is a messy film that doesn't shy away from the nasty, bitter subject matter that it undertakes. You witness the first murder, a vicious and heinous event, in the first four minutes. The second arrives within the first five. The title of the movie explains the premise, though a better description for the movie might be "no movie for weak stomach". ...read the full review |
| No Country For Old Men - DVD Review By: Chris Cabin - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 3/27/2009 5:36 PM | |
The only good man to be found in Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men is a sheriff by the name of Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). Every morning he has bacon and black coffee with his eggs and he'll take any chance he can to ride horses with his wife in the canyons of the Texas border territory. In a jarring opening monologue, Bell says that to know the kind of evil going on these days would require a man to put "his soul at hazard" and to say "OK, I'll be part of this world." He doesn't find appeal in conceding to either....read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Buena Vista |
| Release Date: 12/26/2008 |
| Running Time: 122 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2007 | | Catalog ID: 5564003 | | UPC: 00786936746754 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English | | Available Subtitles: French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Winner (2008) | | | British Academy Awards, Roger Deakins, Best Cinematography | | | British Academy Awards, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Best Director | | | British Academy Awards, Javier Bardem, Best Supporting Actor | | | Golden Globe, Javier Bardem, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture | | | Golden Globe, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Best Screenplay - Motion Picture | |
Nominee (2008) | | | Oscar, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Best Achievement in Directing | | | Oscar, Scott Rudin, et. al., Best Motion Picture of the Year | | | Oscar, Javier Bardem, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role | | | Oscar, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published | | | Oscar, Roger Deakins, Best Achievement in Cinematography | |
Winner (2008) | | | Screen Actors Guild, Tommy Lee Jones, et. al., Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture | | | Screen Actors Guild, Javier Bardem, Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role |
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| | Professional Reviews | Box Office
"The film represents vintage Coen brothers with all the strengths that have established them as serious auteurs from BLOOD SIMPLE onward." 11/01/2007 p.117Rolling Stone
4 stars out of 4 -- "[T]his landmark of a movie is fresh territory for the Coens....Good and evil are tackled with a rigorous fix on the complexity involved....The Coens squeeze us without mercy in a vise of tension and suspense..." 11/15/2007 p.202 New York Times
"For formalists -- those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design -- it's pure heaven....[Joel and Ethan Coen] combine virtuosic dexterity with mischievous high spirits..." 11/09/2007 p.E1 USA Today
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is suspenseful, bleak and haunting....[With] masterful performances." 11/09/2007 p.4E Entertainment Weekly
"[A] measured yet excitingly tense, violent yet maturely sorrowful thriller...[A] stirring success..." -- Grade: A- 11/16/2007 p.48-49 Total Film
5 stars out of 5 -- "Virtuoso. A film of pin-sharp principles, cross-hair precision and suffocating tension, this Coens stunner hits like a cattle gun between the eyes." 01/01/2008 p.38 Los Angeles Times
"An intense, nihilistic thriller, as well as a model of implacable storytelling, this is a film you can't stop watching..." 11/09/2007 Rolling Stone
Ranked #1 in Rolling Stone's "10 Best Movies Of 2007" -- "[A] transfixing meditation on good and evil....Javier Bardem gives a career performance..." 12/27/2007 119 Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] tense, stripped-down thriller....The pairing of McCarthy and the Coens works surprisingly well." 02/01/2008 106 Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "The Coens have rediscovered their mojo, with, dare we say it, a new maturity." 02/01/2008 p.40-41 Sight and Sound
"NO COUNTRY is a pitch-perfect thriller that delivers the pleasurable fear and suspense expected of the genre even as it sends its conventions to the shredder." 02/01/2008 p.48-49 Ultimate DVD
5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he Coen Brothers' finest film in a long time....Javier Bardem's fate-driven hitman will doubtless prove an enduring cinematic creation." 05/01/2008 p.92 ReelViews 9 of 10
Expecting normalcy from a Coen Brothers production is a pointless endeavor, but anticipating brilliance isn't outlandish. Their latest feature, which has about zero box office potential, provides plenty of the latter and a little of the former. It's mostly an off-kilter road trip that accomplishes what the Coens do best - seamlessly merging drama, violence, and quirky humor into a whole. They also accomplish something many would have believed to be impossible: providing a coherent and reasonably faithful adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel. (Many would place McCarthy in the "unadaptable" category.) However, following their own nonstandard trail, Joel and Ethan - following McCarthy's lead - decide that just because a story is worth telling, it doesn't demand a clean ending...Nevertheless, those who openly hissed at John Sayles' Limbo or declared the finale of The Sopranos to be a tease will not be pleased by how No Country for Old Men elects to wrap up its diverse storylines...If there's one thing that can always be said of a Coen Brothers film, it's that conventional rules and expectations can be jettisoned. That's certainly the case here, with a Western that's not a Western, a crime thriller that's not a crime thriller, and a comedy that's not a comedy. Like Fargo, the movie delights in making viewers scratch their scalps. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
"No Country for Old Men" is as good a film as the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have ever made, and they made "Fargo." It involves elements of the thriller and the chase but is essentially a character study, an examination of how its people meet and deal with a man so bad, cruel and unfeeling that there is simply no comprehending him...This movie is a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate. It is also, in the photography by Roger Deakins, the editing by the Coens and the music by Carter Burwell, startlingly beautiful, stark and lonely. As McCarthy does with the Judge, the hairless exterminator in his "Blood Meridian" (Ridley Scott's next film), and as in his "Suttree," especially in the scene where the riverbank caves in, the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are in the face of implacable injustice. The movie also loves some of its characters, and pities them, and has an ear for dialog not as it is spoken but as it is dreamed...Many of the scenes in "No Country for Old Men" are so flawlessly constructed that you want them to simply continue, and yet they create an emotional suction drawing you to the next scene. Another movie that made me feel that way was "Fargo." To make one such film is a miracle. Here is another. - Roger Ebert
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