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Dec 17, 2024 Web Exclusive By Zachary Lee Photography by The Criterion Collection

“What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?” That line, uttered by Javier Bardem’s sadistic and psychopathic mercenary Anton Chigurh, opens Joel and Ethan Coen’s neo-Western crime thriller No Country for Old Men with wrathful violence and unforgiving charisma. It’s an iconic line that acts as a thesis statement for the film as a whole, speaking to the ways we are to make sense of inhuman cruelty and lawlessness. Viewers have the opportunity to dive into the world the Coens have crafted thanks to Criterion’s 4K UHD release of the film.

No Country for Old Men centers around three main characters: Vietnam War veteran Llewyn Moss (Josh Brolin), Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and Bardem’s aforementioned Anton Chigurh. After Davis stumbles upon $2.4 million after a drug deal gone wrong, he takes it only to realize he’s got more than he bargained for when Chigurh pursues him, leaving a trail of battered and broken bodies in his quest. Bell follows closely as well, but is always far behind, symbolic in many ways of the law’s inability to carry out and dispense justice, let alone diagnose and deal with evil.

The Criterion version has many features split across two discs: the first disc holds the new 4K digital master, with a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. The second disc has a Blu-ray version, as well as bonus features. What’s particularly of note with the new 4K UHD version is that the master was supervised by DOP Roger Deakins. The same attention to detail that the cinematographer brings to his project is palpably felt in this updated version.

What has always been striking and gut-wrenching about No Country for Old Men is the way violence can seemingly manifest no matter the context. The well-lit room of a police office can be painted red with the blood of a choked police officer; the afternoon highway can be littered with the body of someone shot with a bolt pistol. At the same time, the witching hours of an empty town can become a deadly battleground for a shootout. These details are all effectively captured here, perhaps best felt during the film’s (many) nighttime sequences. In one sequence, Moss hides in a motel room, anticipating that Chigurh will track and meet him there. Intending to trap him, Moss turns the lights off and keeps his firearm aimed at the door as the seconds, then minutes, tick by. It’s a tense scene as it is, but the 4K remaster adds another layer of suspension; the various objects in Moss’s motel room are a bit more visible, but they flicker in and out of focus as the clock ticks by, and Moss grows more and more paranoid. The tension of this scene communicates how Moss’ relationship to his surroundings quickly deteriorates as fear and anxiety sets in. It’s yet another way that Deakins’ cinematography helps immerse viewers in the dread of this story.

Although the actors did not come back to record any new interviews (the ones included in this release are archival), the new edition treats viewers to two brand new conversations–one between the Coens and author Megan Abbott; another between cinematographer Roger Deakins and associate producer David Diliberto. The over 40-minute conversation between the Coens and Abbot is a standout. Through their conversation, it’s evident the brothers have had ample time to think about their film’s legacy and impact yet they also share behind the scene details about the project with clarity that feels as if they’ve just stepped off from filming. They reflect on how they made “a horror movie about getting old.” With this in mind, they share how they worked with Deakins to focus on the multitudes that could be contained in an actor’s face. “We spent a long time looking at the folds of Tommy Lee Jones’s face,” Ethan Coen jokes.

The caustic, almost-Old-Testament-like wrath and violence that characterizes the film is also something the two discuss, especially when the Coens recall an early memory of when they filmed the first of Chigurh’s many coin toss murders. Upon seeing Bardem stroll with the infamous weapon in hand, Ethan Coen quipped “I’m really glad that we didn’t make that up,” highlighting how author Cormac McCarthy’s original novel was a treasure trove of descriptors and character backstories that helped them in their screenwriting process. The attention to detail is everywhere, up to the fact that the artwork on the two discs are two sides of the coin (if it was hard to get Bardem’s delivery of “Just call it out” out of your head already, good luck forgetting it now). Other features include a making-of documentary, additional cast interviews and a documentary that focuses on Jones’ character. These will be familiar to those who have the previous Blu-ray version.

17 years after its release, No Country for Old Men continues to inspire and entertain; first-time viewers and longtime fans can find much to love with this Criterion Collection release. The film sees the Coen Brothers at their most unforgivingly bleak and also at their most rousingly theological. It is a proverb of violence, cattle guns and desert sand worth returning to again and again, and there’s no better way to watch and rewatch this haunting and bleak nightmare than with this release.

(www.criterion.com/films/29429-no-country-for-old-men)