No country for old men.

I am a great fan of Terry Pratchett and especially his Discworld novels. ANd in those, one of my favourite characters is Death. It has a kind of sympathetic feel to it. Just "something" doing its job. It has to be here, he doesn't specially enjoys it yet he takes pride in making sure it's done well.

In the Coen brother's latest, the character that will most certainly stay in everyone's mind will be that of Anton Chigurg. And that character could actually be an incarnation of Death itself. With a difference that makes him less engaging. He loves what he does.

Actually I read an interview of Javier Bardem (who plays Chigurg) somewhere and he said that he though his character was more an incarnation of violence. And it does make sense (not that I would doubt that he knows what he's talking about, after all he played the guy... ^^; ).
Violence is everywhere, unstoppable, thorough. That's what he is.

At some point in the movie people question if he's not a ghost. And you hear this stories that could be his doing but are way too old... Was he there? Or is he just doing the same old thing that other did before him?
To the point that later in the movie, you don't even see things, because you just know what happenned anyway. The same old.

You can only witness it or be a victim.
So to get all those point of views ad so we're not left with just that grim character, we also have the witness in the person of the aging sheriff (that has seen it all) and the guy that thinks he can get away with it.

As usual with the Coens (although here they were adapting a book, so they are not the only ones accountable for this), the characters are very well written and very engaging whether main or secondary. They are also played to the standard, with obviously Javier Bardem in a turn I'm not going to forget (as the "ultimate badass"), but also Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin that give him a good opposition (although they never share a scene).

One thing was that the movie is set in Texas and the characters have very strong accents, which pushed my laguage skill to the limit, so I couldn't fully enjoy the dialogs. Obviously, again as usual, they are excellent (from what I managed to understand). But this is only due to my own limitation and should be put to the cedrit of the Coen, that always scrupulously keep their universe coherent.

Along the same lines, the attention to the tinest details in the cinematography was also amazing, the way they manage to suggest things without showing it (the repertition of blood trails, the attention of Chigurg not to put blood on his shoes...).

It all adds up to make a fairly standard and unoriginal pitch still feel fresh.

It's a movie that gets your mind working after you've left the cinema, that you want to discuss... That's how good this is.