Fall Movie Preview 2007

No movie this year hits you harder than the fierce and fiendishly funny No Country for Old Men. Joel and Ethan Coen, who share writing and directing credits, make a blood connection with Cormac McCarthy's novel about a shootout between bad and worse in West Texas, circa 1980. Javier Bardem, pale as death with a megabad haircut, takes evil to the next level as Anton Chigurh, a killing machine whose weapon of choice is a cattle stun gun. His target is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin, a career-making performance), who came upon a drug slaughter while hunting and walked off with $2 million that wasn't his. Chigurh wants it back. Tommy Lee Jones hits a new standard of rugged excellence as Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff with a working sense of morality and a notion that the world went wrong when people stopped saying "sir" and "ma'am." Such are the bare bones of a spellbinder that builds unbearable suspense without losing sight of the story's grieving heart. From the acting (you'll never forget Bardem's tour de force) to the cinematography (Roger Deakins is a genius at locating shadowy menace even in blinding light), this classic-in-the-making is the Coens at the peak of their powers. This you do not want to miss.