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| No Country for Old Men | 
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| Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Actors: Javier Bardem, Rodger Boyce, Josh Brolin, Barry Corbin, Beth Grant
Studio: Miramax
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $5.68
You Save: $24.31 (81%)
New (54) Used (52) Collectible (1) from $5.68
Avg. Customer Rating:  615 reviews
Sales Rank: 317
Format: Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 122
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.6
MPN: DISD55640D
UPC: 786936746754
EAN: 0786936746754
ASIN: B00118T63C
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: March 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: DVD is in acceptable condtion. Some scratches; has been TESTED & PLAYS FINE. 100% guaranteed against defects. Contact us within 7 days if there is any defect, and we will gladly refund your purchase. Our standard shipping method is USPS Media Mail.
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| Customer Reviews:
 No Movie For Smart Men March 23, 2008
34 out of 65 found this review helpful
When an A student comes home with a C- it's a lot more disappointing than when a C student comes home with a D. From the very beginning, the Coen brothers have been in my personal pantheon of favorite writer/directors - even their failures are better than the successes of lesser practitioners. Coen brother films could be relied upon for sturdy craftsmanship, memorable characters, keen intelligence, dry - even lethal - wit, and the ability to dance easily between the absurd and the vividly authentic. Even lesser films like The Big Lebowski (very dumb) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (ham-fisted) stood head and shoulders above everyday Hollywood fare. That's why it's so ironic the Academy swooned over NCFOM, the worst movie these two prodigies have produced.
Unlike so many of their contemporaries, the Coen brothers never succumbed to the style-over-content trap - until now. For them, character always drove plot, protagonists were interesting and well drawn - not to say quirky. The gushing over this film's first act, with its lovely desert footage, elegant pacing, and atmosphere - conveniently glosses over the complete lack of action - or point. Llewelyn Moss, Josh Brolin, stumbles over a drug deal gone bad and unwisely takes the money he finds. (Brolin is actually quite good as a doomed idiot.) This act prompts what some would describe as action, or story. Tommy Lee Jones essentially channels himself as aging Sheriff, Ed Tom Bell. While his hangdog expression - painted on a face resembling 40 miles of bad road - "says" that the violence of this day is beyond his comprehension, the story does not. That's a pity - since that is allegedly the film's theme. TLJ moping doth not a movie make.
Coen brothers films are always characterized by black comedy - think back to the white glove and knife in Blood Simple. One must wonder what happened to their sense of humor. NCFOM is devoid of irony, wit, or even the ability to poke fun at its own pompousness. Woody Harrelson's pointless stroll through the scenery might have been intended as funny, I hope not; it's dreary filler that arrives when the film is already dragging. More egregious still is the body count. The Coen brothers have certainly killed off quite a few characters over the years, but in the past there was always a reason, it was integral to the plot. The killing in NCFOM is relentless, pointless, and repulsive. Apologists would say; this IS the point, the merciless, unending nature of violence. My response is that this is a movie, not a philosophical debate. The moment you have symbols instead of protagonists, you're in trouble.
Which brings us inevitably to Anton Chigiurh, played by Javier Bardem. Mr. Bardem must get points for not giggling while sporting his ludicrous haircut. But the Academy was just flat-out wrong. His character is one-dimensional and his performance is one-dimensional - at least Bergman had the creativity to put Death in a Speedo and cape. The celebrated "coin-toss" scene is indeed wonderful, but it's a very small moment of excellence in a large, arid landscape. O Coen Brothers, Where Art Thou?
 Despicable Snuff Film Being Sold as "Serious Art" December 21, 2007
33 out of 94 found this review helpful
"No Country for Old Men" is for the kind of film fan who remarks, "Gee, wasn't that murder a clever mise-en-scene?" and who asks, "What kind of lens do you think they used in that strangulation shot?"
The skeleton of "No Country for Old Men" is a cheap, 78-minute, gun-monster-chase B movie. Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, the monster. He is Frankenstein; he is Max Cady from "Cape Fear;" he is from your childhood nightmares. He may be death personified.
One of many completely implausible scenes: an arresting officer, defying any logic, turns his back on Chigurh. Chigurh, displaying the supple sinuosity of a Cirque du Soleil contortionist, or an orangutan, slips out of his handcuffs. This is done out of camera view, because for Bardem it would be impossible; thus the scene's implausibility. Chigurh then, in real time, strangles the young police officer to death on camera. This is an extended sequence. This is the payoff for "No Country for Old Men": watching one human being kill other human beings, in scene after scene after scene, using various weapons, including a captive bolt pistol usually used on livestock. Guess Chigurh couldn't get hold of a Texas chainsaw. This is a slasher flick for the pretentious.
Early on, there are well-done, if standard, chase scenes. A man outruns a car: not believable, but fun to watch. A pit bull chases this fleeing man down a whitewater river. The man reloads his gun at the very last moment (of course) and shoots the pit bull dead just as it is about to sink its teeth into the man. Later, in a hotel, a beeping transponder informs the killer where his prey hides. Your pulse may race and you may think that this is all leading up to something interesting. You will be disappointed.
Tommy Lee Jones, whose ear lobes appear to be metastasizing as he ages, wanders aimlessly through the film as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, delivering cornpone, homespun, cowboy poet ruminations that are more or less opaque in meaning. No doubt the film's fans are even now feverishly compiling a companion volume that decodes Bell's dreams and conveys their depth.
Woody Harrelson, late the bartender of the TV sitcom "Cheers," shows up for a completely pointless half-hour role that yanks the viewer right out of the movie. "What is Woody Harrelson doing here?"
Some years back, some bored English majors decided that conventional narrative structure was not intellectual enuf, and decided to play games with narrative. "No Country for Old Men" plays these sorts of games. The viewer is invited to invest time getting to know characters who are eliminated from the plot in ways that convey no meaning and are not moving. The narrative flow is truncated and yet the movie keeps going; viewers ask themselves why the movie is continuing -- sometimes out loud, even in a movie theater -- this is supposed to be a deep, intellectual experience. It is not. It is merely annoying.
Other than bratty English major head games, pretty much the entire substance of "No Country for Old Men" is a series of murders and tortures committed by Chigurh, who may symbolize your high school's worst bully - a bully so terrifying exactly because he targeted English majors. His victims are often courteous; their likability makes watching them be humiliated and then murdered an uncomfortable, and, given the film's structure, ultimately pointless exercise. Not only are the Coen Brothers torturing their characters, they also torment their ticket-buying audiences.
Chigurh's nice victims are often poor, rural, Southern, whites, the kind of people often not featured as positive, lead characters in Hollywood entertainments. They are often villains - witness films like "Deliverance." Here they are murder victims. Chigurh is associated with Mexicans, part of a rising "dismal tide," as one Anglo character puts it. No matter how you feel about immigration, you may find this association of Mexicans with a rising tide of evil to be offensive.
The film's boosters insist that the movie offers three deep and shocking lessons: life doesn't always follow a neat narrative structure; evil often triumphs; and the old days were more peaceful and, nowadays, things are getting really bad. In truth, everyone walking in to the theater already knows the first two "lessons." No one needs the Coen brothers to inform him that life doesn't always follow a neat narrative structure, or that evil often triumphs. We expect filmmakers, and all artists, to offer us a more substantial thesis. As for the third "lesson," that the old days were more peaceful and things are getting really bad today -- have the Coens, or Cormac McCarthy, heard of Attila the Hun, or any number of other less-than-peaceful and courteous personages from our common human past?
One might well be dubious about "No Country"'s "lessons." Visit internet discussion boards devoted to this movie, and you will find fans asking, not "What is fate?" or "What is the role of a good man in a bad world?" but questions like, "If Hannibal Lector and Anton Chigurh were locked in a room, who would come out alive?" Given such reflections, one is safe in concluding that the appeal of this film is its emphasis on graphic violence, rather than on any more advanced intellectual or artistic merit.
 Murder Porn February 24, 2008
32 out of 71 found this review helpful
I sat in the theater for about ten minutes after No Country for Old Men was over. It wasn't the genius of it that left me motionless. In fact, I didn't detect very much genius in it at all. I found none of the characters terribly appealing or engaging, save for the sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones, and he was, at most, an attempted surrogate for the audience--bearing witness to the events of the film and emoting a combination of disbelief, chagrin, and shock. The story was scattershot and barely engaging. And what held it all together at all was a murderous character who seemed to be a superficial study in ruthlessness--a man who, in the relentless pursuit of money, gets to indulge a grim kick for gratuitous killing. Everyone knows that there are bloodless, heartless, and fiercely stoic maniacs in the world, and that there always have been. In fact, in the kind of spoon-feeding I truly hate in movies, Tommy Lee Jones's character recounts a newspaper story about a brutal killing to unnecessarily drive home the point. The only question No Country for Old Men left on the table, at least for me, was, "So what?" It's like Terminator told from the point of view of the machines--a heartless, relentless tale with nary a lesson in it apart from the obvious: Don't mess with drug dealers because you're likely to find a kind of ruthlessness you've never imagined. Not exactly rocket science, and not exactly unimaginable, since it's been done before in better movies, including The Professional.
Part of the reason No Country for Old Men left me cold is that it seemed remarkably undecided as to its own message. As a result, the critics have had a field day coming up with all manner of metaphors they believe inhabit the story and the characters. I could find none. At best, Javier Bardem's killer represented the kind of conscienceless, amoral persona that has become a rather common trigger point for fear and public panic. Not shaded by any empathy or concern for human life, he may be a representation of the modern, existential killing machine who is beyond reasoning with or avoiding--like the carjacker who kills the young mother after she tries to connect with him and provides details of the young children she will leave behind. He is a predator unmoved, and perhaps even disgusted, by other human beings. One monumental problem, however, is that No Country For Old Men provides no counterpoint for this. There is not a single character I cared about who came into the crossfire of Bardem's narcissistic psychopath. In addition, since he mainly focuses his murderous rage on those who, to one degree or another, are culpable in the theft or attempted recovery of drug money, his persona lacks the cold-blooded arbitrariness of so many real killers that make the news.
No Country for Old Men, in the end, is the cinematic equivalent of watching a shark feed. As the movie wrapped up, I thought, maybe the one person spared by our homicidal shadow of a character might kill him in some unintended accident. At least that would put a nihilistic smile on our faces at the end of this otherwise humorless dirge.
Coen Brothers Jump Shark March 12, 2008
28 out of 65 found this review helpful
The Coen brothers have finally spoofed themselves. This movie sucks. Don't waste your time or money. It wasn't even watchable, I found myself wanting to find something to read. Believe me when I say, this isn't on the same level as Fargo or even Raising Arizona. It's way, way down there. Oh, and the elitist remark the brothers make on the making of doc., about someone living in a double wide and working at Walmart, was just plain snobbery. These boys have been in Beverly Hills too long.
still horrible January 26, 2008
27 out of 132 found this review helpful
Well, in response to the 'haters' on the discussion page, I would have to agree that taste differs, however a) you're wrong about me, and b) this movie did and will forever stink and be boring as hell. I have over 1200 movies at home, anything from Gandhi and Driving Miss Daisy to the Matrix, historic war epics, documentaries, and everything in between. This includes all genres, all ages, black and white, computer generated, international, mainstream, nieche films, cult classics - you name it, I got it. Heck, I even took college courses on film, analysis, and film making... None of this changes the fact that this movie blows. The acting was stiff, 95% was shot too dark, the "gun" was downright silly, the ending was non-existent, and why this film won any awards other than a Raspberry is a Hollywood mystery. The films that tend to win awards, often do so because there is a limited amount of industry-specific people who want to set themselves apart from the crowd. Sometimes, they get it right (Pan's Labyrinth) and sometimes they get it wrong (as in the case here). Not even the violence, as many here called it, was anything to write home about - you didn't really see anything because it was all shot in the dark! I have seen Western's with more violence than this dull excuse of a film (Soldier Blue). Critics (and regular people) can heighten any film beyond its actual worthiness and claim to be superior to others, with a better understanding of the intent etc bla bla... Nothing changes the fact that I was bored to tears with this overrated mess of a 'movie'.
I went to the theater with a buddy to check out the new Coen brothers film. We had great expectations going in, but when we came out, we wanted the two hours of our lives back. This is one of those movies where the "expert critics" hail all the things that prevent this film from becoming mainstream. But for the regular Joe, you, and me, this simply boils down to a massive disappointment. The characters are flat, the story drags on 45 minutes too long, the ending may be the worst in film history... Stay away from this one. The early reviews heralded this one for the "weird cattle gun" and it's "extreme violence" etc. Not true. The weapon was rather silly and most of the important story events are happening in the dark or behind a door (oooh) so as to put your imagination to work, rather than your eyes. This may work well for critics, but for an audience that expects a wild ride, this is a recipe for boredom.
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