No Country for Old Men is one of those movies which you'll probably not sit up and notice, nor will it attract your attention in the local DVD Rental store. And for good reason. It is probably not one of those movies which you would want to pop into your player, sit back and enjoy the movie. It is as disturbing, thought provoking and as serious as a movie can get. The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan Coen have done a wonderful job of ensuring that anybody who actually watches this movie ends up being at least a little affected by it. It leaves a lasting impression on your minds. The screenplay, the characters, the casting, the cinematography, all of these simply creep up on the audiences to leave a lasting impact.

The story deals with the circumstances where Llewelyn Moss (played by Josh Brolin) accidentally comes across what remains of a botched drug deal. He encounters several dead bodies, a wounded Mexican asking for water and to top it all two million dollars in cash. His decision to pocket the cash sets off a series of events in motion, accentuating the rest of the movie. Realizing that he is being pursued by a hitman, Anton Chigurh (played eeriely well by Javier Bardem), ha makes his way to a motel on the road to Mexico.

Now Anton is reasonably ruthless as a hitman and his weapon of choice is his custom-made captive bolt pistol. His methods of disposing off his victims with as little noise and hullabaloo as possible also make him the man to watch out for. He almost gets his hands on Moss and the money, but Moss being just a tad ahead of Anton manages to get across the border. Whether Moss succeeds in getting away with the money, or does he succumb to the chilling, ruthless efficiency of Anton make up for the rest of the movie.

Some wonderful acting by the lead characters, a taut screenplay coupled with some wonderful cinematography make this movie a must-watch movie for any serious movie lover. The fact that this movie pretty much made it to the Top 10 lists of almost all movie critics in 2007 when it was released speaks volumes for its class. The list of awards and accolades this movie won also almost runs into a 100 separate awards. Now if these aren't reason enough to watch this movie, nothing else is.

LAMBScore for this movie


Large Association of Movie Blogs


Related links


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IMDB link
Allmovie link
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A couple of reasons why I watched ‘Before the Rains’ were Santosh Sivan, its director and Nandita Das, its lead character. While I am a huge fan of Santosh Sivan’s cinematography in almost all of the movies in which he collaborated with Mani Ratnam (Roja, Iruvar, Dil Se, Raavanan, need I say more), the fact that I had seen quite a few interviews of his and he came across as this amazingly imaginative person who knows how to get the maximum detail in each and every frame of his piqued my interest in him. Santosh Sivan is almost like an university of cinematography and the script that he picked up for this movie lent itself to be filmed extraordinarily beautifully.

The second reason that I watched this movie was Nandita Das.
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