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The Coen brothers dramatically returned to form with their best serious work since Fargo, and were rewarded with the Academy Award for Best Picture. This one can proudly sit on the shelf with O Brother Where Art Thou, The Big Lebowski, Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink, after some unexpected misfires earlier this decade.

Whereas in the past they have merely paid homage to the crime fiction of figures such as Chandler, Hammett and Cain, this film really was adapted for the screen from a novel. Cormac McCarthy's book, No Country For Old Men, was a departure for him, as he stripped back his usual literary style in favour of writing a genre piece that stylishly occupies the territory more usually associated with Elmore Leonard, although instead of Leonard's trademark snappy dialogue, he favours wistful internal reveries about the loss of the traditional American west at the start of the 1980s. The challenge of transitioning such an approach to the screen is overcome admirably, whilst Roger Deakins successfully lenses McCarthy's fascination with the American landscape and creates some stunning visuals. Unusually, the film contains almost no music.

Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, a man who stumbles on the aftermath of an aborted drug deal and walks away with two point four million dollars. Academy Award winner Javier Bardem steals the film as the psychopathic killer sent to recover the missing money, and Tommy Lee Jones is the sheriff left to pick up the bodies left littered through the desert. The film contains some fine kinetic action sequences.

The screenplay makes some changes from the source material - the hitch-hiker sub-plot is wholly absent to the chagrin of some fans - but is completely faithful to the tone of the piece, and bravely keeps the divisive resolution to the plot lines, or lack thereof, intact. What starts off as Brolin's film really belongs to Jones's character, and some audiences were uncomfortable with this. The film has to be watched on its own terms and like all good art teaches the viewer how to accommodate this if you let it whilst staying true to its own vision. It is Sheriff Bell, not Moss, who is mindful that Chigurh represents a new and dangerous twist of fate for a world which his generation is gradually losing. Although the crime-caper gone wrong scenario sets the characters in motion, it is never McCarthy, or the Coen's primary concern. Anybody expecting Quentin Tarantino should be prepared for Terrence Malick by the final act.

No Country

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