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"No Country for Old Men" is a sharp, smart, contemplative crime saga, impeccably crafted by two men who know exactly what the hell they're doing behind a camera: the Coen brothers. They know how to make good movies - they've been doing it for over two decades now. In 1984, they burst onto the moviemaking scene with the furiously inventive film noir "Blood Simple." That film starred Joel Coen's wife, Frances McDormand, who would eventually land the role of a lifetime (and win an Oscar) as homey, pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson in 1996's "Fargo," which was a smashing success for the Coen duo (they won for their brilliant original screenplay).

In between that time, though, the Coen brothers hit the mark with genre-fueled mayhem, showing a flair for slapstick comedy ("Raising Arizona"), crime drama (the masterful "Miller's Crossing"), and social satire ("Barton Fink," and "Hudsucker Proxy"), and, in the process, building up acclaim as gifted film artists. After "Fargo" came The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers - all worthwhile films in one way or another. And now, "No Country for Old Men."

This may be their finest piece of work yet. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, "No Country" is brought to crackling life by the Coens. It follows Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a Vietnam-vet who has the fortune (what turns out to be misfortune) of stumbling across a drug deal gone horribly bad while hunting antelope out on the open West Texas plains. He finds $2 million in a satchel and has the good sense enough to know that someone will come looking for it. That someone is Anton Chigurh (an utterly fearsome, scene-chewing Javier Bardem, who won the Supporting Actor Oscar), a genuine psychopath who is Terminatoresque in his determination to regain the drug money. There's also Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), a bounty hunter who is hired by the drug buyer (Stephen Root) because he knows everything there is to know about Chigurh. Here's a rough idea about the man: he's something like Joan Rivers' worst nightmare come to life - a Frankenstein monster with bad hair, bad fashion, a cattle gun, and no sense of humor. And wherever Llewelyn goes, he is sure to follow (we learn that there's a tracking device in the satchel).

The moral center of the film, though, is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (sage-wise Tommy Lee Jones), a sad, weary-faced Texas lawman, resigned to accept that his old world values of right and wrong

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