The Coen brothers are in the conversation for the best directors alive. The duo has made several perfect movies over the course of their career, and they have a few recognizable signatures.
In spite of all the duo’s success, the Coen Brothers have only won Best Picture at the Oscars once, in 2007. No Country for Old Men, the movie that won them the award, is set to leave Amazon Prime Video at the end of September. Here are three reasons you should check it out before it goes.
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It’s, in some ways, a typical Coen Brothers story
While not every Coen Brothers movie starts this way, No Country for Old Men has a pretty classic premise. It tells the story of a hunter who stumbles across a massive bag of money and quickly finds himself in over his head as he tries to elude both the cops and the man who has been sent after it.
This standard conceit makes the movie incredibly accessible, but No Country for Old Men has pretty weighty ideas on its mind. It’s this combination of a simple premise, one that would work well in a standard thriller, and weightier ideas that ultimately make No Country for Old Men so successful.
It features a trio of remarkable central performances
Javier Bardem’s performance as Anton Chigurh tends to get the most attention, and not without reason. What he does is both transformative and genuinely chilling, and he created one of the great villains in the history of movies.
Just as crucial to No Country‘s ultimate success are the performances that Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are giving around him. Bardem is able to go big because they both feel so distinctly human, two men trying to make the best of the circumstances that they have found themselves in, both of whom wonder why this little bit of money seems to be causing so much trouble.
It has an unforgettable ending
No Country for Old Men is one of the darker movies that the Coens have ever directed. Like many of their movies, it’s a meditation on the nature of good and evil. The movie’s final scene, which follows Tommy Lee Jones’s sheriff home, is fundamentally about whether it’s ever going to be possible to understand why men do evil things to one another.
The final moment is a bold, extended monologue that Jones delivers beautifully. Few actors can hold the screen better, and while it might not be the kind of catharsis you want, it turns out to be exactly the right ending for the movie.
Stream No Country for Old Men on Prime Video.
