This is an accepted version of this page 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.

Chigurh is hired to recover the missing money; meanwhile, Terrell County Sheriff Ed Tom Bell begins investigating the failed drug deal.

Moss retrieves the case from the Rio Grande and arranges to meet Carla Jean at a motel in El Paso, where he plans to give her the money and hide her from danger.

It is also a lament for the way the young neglect the wisdom of the past and, presumably, of the old ... Yeats chooses Byzantium because it was a great early Christian city in which Plato's Academy, for a time, was still allowed to function.

In his book of mystical writings, A Vision, Yeats says, "I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one, that architect and artificers ... spoke to the multitude and the few alike."

Where the book describes the setting as 'almost dark', the film clearly depicts high noon: no shadows are notable in the establishing shot of the gas station, and the sunlight is bright even if behind cloud cover.

[40] Coincidentally, Paul Thomas Anderson's film There Will Be Blood – another partnership between Miramax and Paramount which competed with No Country For Old Men at the Academy Awards – was being shot in Marfa simultaneously.

"[45] In a later interview, he mentioned the "awkward dilemma [that] No Country certainly contains scenes of some very realistically staged fictional violence, but ... without this violent depiction of evil there would not be the emotional 'pay off' at the end of the film when Ed Tom bemoans the fact that God has not entered his life.

"[21] They discuss choreographing and directing the film's violent scenes in the Sydney Morning Herald: "'That stuff is such fun to do', the brothers chime in at the mention of their penchant for blood-letting.

Skip Lievsay, the film's sound editor called this approach "quite a remarkable experiment," and added that "suspense thrillers in Hollywood are traditionally done almost entirely with music.

As the scene opens in a long shot, the screen is filled with the remote location of the rest stop with the sound of the Texaco sign mildly squeaking in a light breeze.

[59][60][61][62] 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 hitman, albeit less serious in tone.

"[71] Critic Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian stated that "the savoury, serio-comic tang of the Coens' film-making style is recognisably present, as is their predilection for the weirdness of hotels and motels".

[72] Geoff Andrew of Time Out London said that the Coens "find a cinematic equivalent to McCarthy's language: his narrative ellipses, play with point of view, and structural concerns such as the exploration of the similarities and differences between Moss, Chigurh and Bell.

He further added that "we couldn't conceive it, sort of soft pedaling that in the movie, and really doing a thing resembling the book ... it's about a character confronting a very arbitrary violent brutal world, and you have to see that.

That may be partly because it's an adaptation of a book by a contemporary author who's usually spoken of in hushed, respectful, hat-in-hand tones, as if he were a schoolmarm who'd finally brought some sense and order to a lawless town.

Though we're not shown Carla Jean's death, when Chigurh exits and checks the bottom of his socks [boots] for blood, it's a clear indication that his brand of violence has struck again.

"[82] Some critics have also identified similarities between No Country for Old Men and the Coens' previous film Raising Arizona, namely the commonalities shared by Anton Chigurh and the fellow bounty hunter Leonard Smalls.

On the other hand, the plot revolves around a drug deal that has gone bad; it involves four-wheel-drive vehicles, semiautomatic weapons, and executives in high-rise buildings, none of which would seem to belong in a western.

According to Richard Gillmore, the main characters are torn between a sense of inevitability, "that the world goes on its way and that it does not have much to do with human desires and concerns", and the notion that our futures are inextricably connected to our own past actions.

Scott Foundas stresses that everyone in the film plays both roles,[90] while Judie Newman focuses on the moments of transition, when hunter Llewelyn Moss and investigator Wells become themselves targets.

William J. Devlin explores the narrative of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, an aging Western hero, symbolic of an older tradition, who does not serve an underpopulated "Wild West", but an evolved landscape with new breeds of crime which baffle him.

Color vibrancy, black level, resolution and contrast are reference quality ... Every line and wrinkle in Bell's face is resolved and Chigurh sports a pageboy haircut in which every strand of hair appears individually distinguishable.

The audio quality earned an almost full mark, where the "24-bit 48 kHz lossless PCM serves voices well, and excels in more treble-prone sounds ... Perhaps the most audibly dynamic sequence is the dawn chase scene after Moss returns with water.

Close your eyes and listen to Moss's breathing and footsteps as he runs, the truck in pursuit as it labors over rocks and shrubs, the crack of the rifle and hissing of bullets as they rip through the air and hit the ground ... the entire sequence and the film overall sounds very convincing.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Bolstered by powerful lead performances from Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men finds the Coen brothers spinning cinematic gold out of Cormac McCarthy's grim, darkly funny novel.

[72] Rob Mackie of The Guardian also said that "what makes this such a stand-out is hard to put your finger on – it just feels like an absorbing and tense two hours where everyone is absolutely on top of their job and a comfortable fit in their roles.

[82] A. O. Scott of The New York Times stated that "for formalists – those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design – it's pure heaven.

[116][117] Occasional disapproval was voiced, with some critics noting the absence of a "central character" and "climactic scene"; its "disappointing finish" and "dependen[ce] on an arbitrarily manipulated plot"; or a general lack of "soul" and sense of "hopelessness".

[48][118][119][120][121][122][123] Sukhdev Sandhu of The Daily Telegraph argued that "Chigurh never develops as a character ... with material as strong as this, one would think they could do better than impute to him a sprawling inscrutability, a mystery that is merely pathological."