The Coens sabotage their wonderfully understated style in No Country with the trivial substance of their narrative. While watching it, I kept thinking hey I buy dvds, so I have finally seen it - the clear best film of the year, then the film gets to a critical point and literally stops.

A masterly tale of the good, the deranged and the doomed that inflects the raw violence of the west with a wry acknowledgement of the demise of codes of honour, this is frighteningly intelligent and imaginative. After two artistic flops, it appeared that filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen had taken a fall. Not so.

They’re back with their twelfth and perhaps greatest film. Brolin adds another feather in the cap that is 2007. Following outstanding performances in Grindhouse and American Gangster, this film gives him a hat trick of performances that should put him on any director’s A list. This Country is for anyone who loves movies.

A film whose long, twisted narrative roads, rather than converging on some obvious, hackneyed point of closure, instead open out to infinite horizons. I was a little worried when I went to buy dvds and see No Country for Old Men because many people have been labeling it a masterpiece, but for once all the hype is warranted.

Wildly overpraised, but a solid return to form for the Coen Bros. People are calling it the best film of the year, and if it isn’t, it’s darn close. Good fortune found is always promising before bad fortune comes looking for it. No Country for Old Men isn’t the first great movie certain to have its ending criticized even by many who enjoyed the rest of the picture.

Tags: buy dvds, coen bros, dvd, entertainment, joel and ethan coen, Movies, no country for old men