No Country for Old Men 2007

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: As pure craftsmanship, No Country for Old Men is as good as we've ever gotten from Joel and Ethan Coen. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: An intense, nihilistic thriller as well as a model of implacable storytelling, this is a film you can't stop watching even though you very much wish you could. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The story is vintage McCarthy in its sense of place and its poetic voice. And it is vintage Coens for some of those same traits, and its cruel, graphic violence. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The mood is darker and quieter than the Coens usually present, though some of the dialogue has a deadpan humor. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: The Coens stir up more panic by quietly flicking off a light switch than Michael Bay did with a fleet of Decepticons. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: The ending is so lame it made me feverish. Then I remembered the perfection that came before it, and concluded that this is, without question, the best movie ever made by the eccentric Coen brothers. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: This is 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. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: It's their best work in a while and it's probably going to end up being the year's best movie. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: No Country For Old Men bears McCarthy's unmistakable stamp, and the equally unmistakable mark of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, making a strong return after a few years off. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: Bardem's unnerving performance is the one that will stay with you. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The Coens understand the stark immediacy of this tale, and they visualize it with brilliantly judged details. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: The storytelling is fluid, especially when directors Joel and Ethan Coen start eliding some of the murders and ask us to imagine them for ourselves. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: [It] just might be the Coen brothers' singular mythic masterwork. Read more

Tom Charity, CNN.com: Played by Spanish actor Javier Bardem, Chigurh is the most original bogeyman to bloody up the screen in a while. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: With its dizzying alternations of comedy and horror, the film is unmistakably a Coen brothers movie -- albeit a much better one than they've made in a while. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: This movie is that stunning. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: A cold, rough look at the dissolution of just about everything. It will bother you afterward. It should. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: This measured yet excitingly tense, violent yet maturely sorrowful thriller marks the first time the filmmakers have faithfully adapted somebody else's work to their own specifications and considerable strengths. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Bardem is nothing less than the best movie villain since Anthony Hopkins slipped out of Hannibal Lecter's manacles, scary-smart and horrifyingly appealing, and Brolin is nothing short of a revelation. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: The Coens are geniuses at creating tension through editing. No Country has craft and atmosphere aplenty. Read more

Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News: Working from a Cormac McCarthy novel that has the heedless, headlong force of an action movie screenplay, Joel and Ethan Coen have improved upon the original by giving it a visual lyricism to match McCarthy's verbal barrage. Read more

Christopher Orr, The New Republic: McCarthy's ferocious tale gives the Coens room to unleash their cinematic gifts, but keeps them from wandering too far afield and losing themselves in the marshes of technical prowess or easy irony. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: This acerbic, darkly poetic Coen brothers' take on the Cormac McCarthy novel is calculated to give you the willies. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: If I want wry lawmen and smart, calculating fugitives, I'll get them from Elmore Leonard; and, if I want Leonard, I'll take him neat, rather than slow-filtered, drop by drop, through a layer of Faulkner, then laced with the Book of Jeremiah. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Here's the gist: It's a near masterpiece. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: No Country for Old Men is based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, but it shows all the Coen strengths. One is a genuine interest in the way people work. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: For a film that traffics in implacable malice, this movie remains remarkably grounded in the everyday. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The most searing film I've seen this year. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: 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. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: For formalists -- those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design -- No Country for Old Men is pure heaven. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: I may be clearly in the minority on this movie. It will almost certainly be number one on my list of movies that other people liked and I didn't. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: An eerily quiet, bracingly bloody, and expertly laid-out adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The Coens know how a thing or two about pacing, and it's relentless here. The story is full of unexpected twists and switchbacks, and opportunities for the audience to gear down and take a breath are few and far between. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: No Country for Old Men is as good a film as the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have ever made, and they made Fargo. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The Coens squeeze us without mercy in a vise of tension and suspense, but only to force us to look into an abyss of our own making. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: The most ambitious and impressive Coen film in at least a decade, featuring the flat, sun-blasted landscapes of west Texas and an eerily memorable performance by Javier Bardem. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Feels less like a breathing, thinking movie than an exercise. 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. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The Coen brothers' screenplay is faithful to McCarthy without being obsequious. In filming it, they play it straight, and the touches of signature humor that are there don't seem like flashes of style, but organic and right. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: The result, while it may be their most ambitious and successful film in years, remains just a Coen brothers movie, a curio to collect rather than an experience to remember. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film is as lean and mean as a barbed-wire necktie, darkly funny and much deeper than the average crime thriller. Read more

Harper Barnes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: No Country for Old Men looks into the unfathomable depths of evil and poses existential questions about human destiny. Meanwhile, it takes your breath away. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Written almost exclusively in taut dialogue, the book already reads like a screenplay, and the Coen brothers have taken full advantage. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: No Country for Old Men may just be the year's best picture. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: No Country delivers, with suspense scenes as taut as they are acutely observed. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: The Coens are wintry and dead calm ironists, and their movie is finally less an assault on our sensibilities than a subtle -- and possibly permanent -- insinuation into our consciousnesses. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: A masterly tale of the good, the deranged and the doomed that inflects the raw violence of the west with a wry acknowledgement of the demise of codes of honour, this is frighteningly intelligent and imaginative. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Joel and Ethan Coen have directed their best film since Fargo more than a decade ago. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor. Read more

Scott Foundas, Village Voice: A stark modern-day Western featuring Javier Bardem as the creepiest movie psycho this side of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: I just don't like it very much. Read more