No Country For Old Men (2007)

In 1980 West Texas, a local hick (Josh Brolin) stumbles across two million dollars in a drug deal gone horribly bad that has left everybody dead or dying. He takes the money but a cold blooded psychopathic killer (Javier Bardem in an Oscar winning performance) will not let anyone or anything get in his way to retrieve the money. This violent black comedy written (based on the Cormac McCarthy novel) and directed by the Ethan and Joel Coen fits perfectly in the Coen brothers nihilistic universe where man's fate is predestined however hard he struggles to change it. One can't get too involved in it because the characters keep us at a distance and we're detached observers as they wriggle and squirm and die. At times, the film seems too clever for its own good but there's no doubt that it's superbly done. I doubt even Sam Peckinpah, whose influence seems distinct, could have done better though I doubt he would have been as discreet with the violence. With Tommy Lee Jones as the aging sheriff attempting to track down Brolin before Bardem gets to him, Kelly MacDonald, Woody Harrelson, Tess Harper, Barry Corbin and Beth Grant.