The Coen brothers are two of the most revered directors working today and have been since bursting onto the indie scene with their low-budget neo-noir debut, Blood Simple. In a career spanning decades and featuring a handful of near-perfect movies, the Coens’ greatest film is arguably No Country for Old Men, their neo-western Oscar darling adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name.
It tells a poignant story worth telling with the economy of its source material and the unmistakable visual style of its directors. No Country brings the Midwestern quirks of the Coens to McCarthy’s brutal South. But the brothers have made plenty of other masterpieces that give No Country for Old Men a run for its briefcase of stolen drug money.
10 No Country Is The Best: It’s Pure Genre Cinema, But Also Transcends Genre
Genre movies are quantifiably the most fun movies because the stock characters and high-stakes situations provide an escapist fantasy. But No Country for Old Men manages to be a genre movie that also has naturalistic elements and focuses on the human side of its story.
No Country has been categorized as many different genres — neo-western, neo-noir, even horror — but it doesn’t belong to one single genre. It’s a genre movie, but it also transcends genre and evolves into something entirely original.
9 Alternative: Miller’s Crossing
When the Coens took a stab at the gangster genre, they made a quintessentially Coens-ian gangster movie. Miller’s Crossing follows a turf war between two Prohibition-era crime syndicates through the eyes of enforcer Tom Reagan, who tries to play both sides and ends up getting screwed by both.
Barry Sonnenfeld’s cinematography and Dennis Gassner’s production design bring the period setting to life, while the Coens’ script harks back to the classic writings of Dashiell Hammett.
8 No Country Is The Best: It Perfected The Cat-And-Mouse Thriller
From Heat to The Fugitive to The Departed, the cat-and-mouse thriller is one fun subgenre. But those movies usually have a clear-cut ending where the cat catches the mouse or the mouse outsmarts the cat. No Country for Old Men doesn’t see things so black-and-white.
The movie expertly plays with narrative ambiguity as the cat gets away with his murderous rampage and the mouse is killed by a different cat altogether, who goes unidentified. Llewelyn Moss is the quintessential “man who knew too much” protagonist (or “mouse”) and Anton Chigurh is the quintessential ruthless killing machine antagonist (or “cat”).
7 Alternative: The Big Lebowski
Although some diehard Coens fans were disappointed by the zaniness of The Big Lebowski following the somber, cerebral excellence of their previous movie, Fargo, the duo’s Chandleresque stoner noir has since come to be appreciated as one of their finest works.
There’s no other movie quite like The Big Lebowski, a pot-addled lampoon of film noir by way of one of the funniest comedies of all time, anchored by Jeff Bridges and John Goodman giving iconic performances.
6 No Country Is The Best: The Acting Is Impeccable
Every cast member in No Country for Old Men gives an intense, riveting performance that immerses the audience in the bleak reality of the movie, making the violent events of the plot even more shocking because the whole thing feels authentic.
Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, and Kelly Macdonald each give one of their all-time finest performances in this movie, but the MVP is, of course, Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, the monstrous, emotionless embodiment of violence who can’t be stopped by Llewelyn Moss and can’t be understood by Sheriff Bell.
5 Alternative: A Serious Man
There’s a delightfully biblical quality to the tragic story of Larry Gopnik in A Serious Man, whose tranquil suburban existence comes crumbling down in spectacular fashion over the course of a very bad week.
The themes of A Serious Man could be analyzed for weeks, while its pitch-black comedy is some of the sharpest in the Coens’ filmography.
4 No Country Is The Best: There’s A Hitchcockian Restraint Missing From Most Modern Thrillers
Most modern thrillers can’t wait to throw their protagonist into a confrontation with the villain to move along a generic three-act plot and establish their rivalry with clunky exposition. Hitchcock, the master of the thriller genre, used a noteworthy sense of restraint that is entirely absent in a lot of today’s sub-Psycho thrillers.
In No Country for Old Men, Llewelyn Moss and Anton Chigurh never come face to face. When they’re engaged in a firefight across a street, they never see each other’s faces. The Coens use subtle Hitchcockian techniques throughout the movie to masterfully build suspense and tension.
3 Alternative: Raising Arizona
Following their slick, neon-drenched debut Blood Simple, the Coens wanted their sophomore directorial effort to be as different as possible. So, they made Raising Arizona, a wacky slapstick comedy about an ex-convict and his cop wife kidnapping a baby to raise as their own when they can’t conceive or adopt.
Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter are fantastic in the lead roles, bringing plenty of heart and humor to H.I. and Ed’s attempts to start an unconventional family.
2 No Country Is The Best: The Ending Doesn’t Satisfy Or Disappoint
The final scene of No Country for Old Men doesn’t see Sheriff Bell arresting Chigurh or Llewelyn’s killers being revealed. Instead, Bell just lives on, unable to explain the terrible things he witnessed when Chigurh came to town.
The unresolved ending doesn’t disappoint the audience, because Bell’s final meditations tell them that not getting a satisfying, clear-cut ending that resolves the plot is exactly the point: the movie is about the relentlessness and inexplicability of violence.
1 Alternative: Fargo
Frances McDormand plays possibly the greatest cop character ever created in Fargo, a pregnant police chief who brings extorters and killers to justice with the use of her investigative skills and quick wit as opposed to Hollywood’s standard excessive force.
From Roger Deakins’ bleak snowbound cinematography to Carter Burwell’s haunting score to the endless shocking plot twists in the Coens’ script, Fargo is everything a movie should be.
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