No Country for Old Men

     It has taken me a couple of days to write this. As soon as No Country for Old Men finished I knew that I could not form an honest opinion of it right then and there. To be honest, as a reviewer I have found that it is beneficial to give some space between the viewing and the writing, but this time I knew it was essential. This film needed some thinking over.

            So I thought. I realized that this was a movie that will be taught in classrooms, talked about in parties, raved about in magazines, and all of your cinema snob friends will tell you why it’s so great and how most people just don’t understand. In other words, this was a great film, but it might take you (as it did me) and most people a while to really catch that.

What clued me in was the dialogue. Carefully crafted words were delivered impeccably by the parade of fascinating characters. I felt the motivation for each of their words, I understood the double meanings behind them, I wanted to sit and ponder what I may have missed. I still want to see it again. This is a thinking person’s movie, designed to churn your mind in wonder of what it all really meant – and I think that the beautiful thing is that its layers are so complex, its dialogue so well written and delivered, its moralistic questions so elaborate that it will take you and your friends several satisfying hours to only scratch No Country For Old Men’s surface.