Coen Bros. back strong with NO COUNTRY

No Country For Old Men effortlessly vaults to the top of the Coen Brothers film oeuvre. The film is embedded with imagery from the entire work of Joel and Ethan Coen. For instance, there's a dog chase that copies motifs from the canine chase in Raising Arizona. There's the deadly aim of a stone faced killer that reminds of events in Blood Simple and Fargo. When Anton Chigurh shoots a large bird late on night on a bridge at point blank range it echoes Leonard Smalls in Raising Arizona blowing up a lizard with a hand grenade.
That dog chase is also like the hat that blows in the wind from Miller's Crossing in that it's hard imagery to shake from your head, even days after viewing. Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin own this film. A chase across the Marfa/Big Bend region of Texas (the film was lensed there and in New Mexico) pits Bardem against Brolin. Stolen drug money propels the greed factor in Brolin's case, however Bardem as Chigurh just likes to kill people. Solid support from Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root (I didn't even recognize him) and Kelly MacDonald give sub plots a high standard.
Then there's that dog that chases Brolin across the scrub brush desert, then dives after him into a river and starts swimming like Jaws. The Coen Brothers films always remind me of Hitchcock because like that master's films their stories always have these great cinematic sequences that will last forever. There's true ambiguity to the ending, which has the Coen's introducing new characters five minutes from the end. It's a violent film that ends on a soft note sung by a supporting character. Some people may find that strange but I like the way the Coen Brothers roll.