No Country for Old Men Review

The boldest decision is an absence. Carter Burwell's score is barely present, so tension is built from ambience: wind over scrub, boot leather on motel carpet, the transponder tone, the pneumatic hiss of a captive bolt pistol. Roger Deakins shoots west Texas in hard flat daylight and then plays the motel work almost entirely in shadow and door-crack light, and a lock cylinder being punched out of a door is more frightening than most horror manages with a monster.

Javier Bardem plays Chigurh without any menace-acting at all, which is why he registers as a natural process rather than a villain, and the gas station coin toss is a scene of pure held silence. Josh Brolin makes Moss competent enough to be worth following. Fidelity to McCarthy is also the cost, since the film deliberately withholds its climax, kills its protagonist offscreen and ends on a monologue about a dream. The last twenty minutes read as either the whole point or a failure depending on the viewer. Superbly crafted and intentionally unsatisfying.