“What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?”

No Country for Old Men is sadly the only movie made by the Coen brothers that I’ve seen, and on first viewing, I absolutely loved it. I thought it was an absolutely fantastic Oscar-winning film, not as good as its competitor for that year, There Will Be Blood (I didn’t even think that before rewatching it), but still absolutely great. Unfortunately, this is a movie that not only dropped a few places in my favorites list but fell out of it altogether after having rewatched it. Before I get to the why of that, though, I’ll go into my positives, which do, in fact, still heavily outweigh my negatives.

When one first watches No Country for Old Men, I think one of the very first things that will stick out to them, perhaps above anything else, is the film’s use of sound, and particularly when it uses hardly any sound. The film is extremely quiet ninety-five percent of the time, which allows you to hear pretty much any sound that is around you, which makes this an underrated home theater pick in my mind. It also allows the moments where the film is not so quiet to hit with a lot of shock value and overall impact than they would otherwise.

The (sort of) main protagonist, Llewelyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin, is a very interesting main lead to follow. Just like everyone else in the film, Brolin brings an excellent performance and really makes this character as complex and difficult to understand as he needs to be. Really, from the beginning of the story, you never get the answers as to what he is ever doing right away, which makes him incredibly intriguing, because the film asks you to sort of piece together the puzzle yourself.

While Brolin brings an excellent performance, it’s really Javier Bardem’s performance as the central antagonist, Anton Chigurh, that will stick with people the most, and I don’t think that’s even really a question at all. Not only is he fantastic in this film, but despite my not having enjoyed No Country for Old Men nearly as much on rewatch, I still honestly believe Chigurh to be one of the greatest villains to ever grace the screen. From the moment we first meet him, even simply due to the nature of his appearance, he’s creepy and unsettling. However, his interactions with people and his psychotic ruthlessness are what make him such a memorable character.

Obviously, as a thriller, you want your movie to deliver on the thrills, and this one certainly does without question. There are numerous individual scenes, whether they are full of dialogue from Chigurh or just completely silent, that absolutely will have you on the edge of your seat, and honestly, one scene in particular that takes place in a hotel, I think, just might possibly be the most terrified I’ve ever been in a movie. It’s a far scarier and more intense scene than quite literally anything that I’ve ever seen come out of a horror flick. What was cool on this rewatch, too, was that I kind of forgot how the scene played out, so it worked just as well as it did on first viewing.

For as beloved as No Country for Old Men really is, the one thing that I know and have heard a lot of people are a little bit more mixed on is the ending, and I personally am on the spectrum of people who think it’s an absolutely brilliant way to end the story. Yes, it’s extremely jarring on first watch, maybe even excessively so, but that’s why it works so well. It is perhaps one of the most unconventional movie endings that I’ve ever seen (probably the most), but what makes it so great is how much it leaves you to think about, particularly when it comes to morality and evil in the world.

Now, finally starting off my negatives, the pacing really just didn’t work for me this time around. If I had to summarize my review in a sentence, it would be, “Individual scenes in No Country for Old Men are better than the sum of the film itself,” because I truly believe that to be the case. Yes, it’s full of some absolutely incredible and spectacularly memorable scenes, but to be honest, I never really care too much about the actual story itself, so during the slower moments, I really don’t like to say this, but it’s honestly a little bit boring to me.

The reason why the story itself doesn’t really do a whole lot for me is because of how episodic and, dare I say, disjointed it feels. This is a film all about ambiguity, but I feel that in its heavy use of that storytelling practice, it kind of loses itself in the process. Not a whole lot of scenes feel like they really go together or tie into the next ones, so a lot, and I mean a lot, of that sense of forward momentum is lost.

I still really like No Country for Old Men, don’t get me wrong, because I do think that individual scenes on their own are absolutely spectacular, but again, as a whole, I think the story itself is just okay.