No Country for Old Men – Blu-ray Disc Review
February 21, 2008 – 8:18 PM - Posted by: Justin SlussTags: Buena Vista, Coen Brothers, Cormac McCarthy, Disney, Ethan Coen, Javier Bardem, Joel Coen, Josh Brolin, Miramax, Oscar Winner, Tommy Lee Jones
has an average rating of 8.3 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
PCM 5.1 @4.6Mbps & Dolby Digital 5.1
are good but do scream”Double Dip”
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– 2007
– 122 minutes
– Miramax (Disney)
– 
This uses 26.6GB for the movie out of 30.0GB total.
Buy it for $19.49 @ Amazon.com
— Review written by Justin Sluss
The Movie Itself is Written for the screen , Produced and Directed by (brothers) Joel and Ethan Coen. The film’s Screenplay is based on the Novel by Cormac McCarthy of the same title, “No Country For Old Men.” In the past The Coen Brothers have brought us such classic films as 1987′s “Raising Arizona” , 1996′s “Fargo” and even 1998′s “The Big Lebowski“. I’ll start things off before describing the plot to the film by saying this does have a dark nature to it and even The Coen Brothers themselves said it’s the closest thing you’ll ever see to them doing a “Horror” film. Now the story takes place in West Texas during 1980, we’re started out with opening narration from “Sheriff Tom Bell” (played by Tommy Lee Jones) describing the current state of crime in his town. In that very same town a man named “Llewelyn Moss” (played by Josh Brolin) is out having some recreational time hunting when he just happens to stumble upon the scene of a drug deal gone incredibly wrong. In the massive amount of blood and chaos he manages to find a truckload of heroin and a suitcase that contains 2 MILLION DOLLARS in cash. He flees home with his money and thinks he’ll lay low and get away with 2 million bucks, he’s wrong.
He can’t stop himself from returning to the scene of the crime and in that process he encounters his first threat, some of the guys involved in the drug deal that went bad, obviously wanting their money back. Moss manages to escape them but what’s about to be his next threat is a man that is virtually unstoppable by the name of “Anton Chigurh” (played by Javier Bardem) who’s been hired to return the missing money (that Moss has). Chigurh (pretty much pronounced “Sugar“) likes to shoot first and take names… well never really. He is rather fond of sometimes having a weak spot and letting someone decide their fate (life or death) in a coin toss but usually he’s more likely to use his air gun (similar to the bolt guns used to kill cattle) or his vast array of many different silenced guns. While all this is going on our local County Sheriff that I mentioned earlier, Bell is investigating the scene of the crime and left a little bit confused by this and the times he’s living in as well (hence the name “No Country For Old Men” and the opening narration by his character).
This all sets us up for our three main characters in a not-so-classic game of “cat and mouse” that at times feels like it’s never ending. Our “bad guy” in this film is relentless like a “Terminator” almost. This easily makes him one of the baddest motherf!@#ers in a movie in quite some time. He’ll definitely leave you just a tad be frightened I’m sure. Speaking of which, Javaier Bardem (who plays that character) does an amazing job here along with fellow actors Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin. All three actors really give their most to this picture and really make it all blend together in an awesome way.
This film is Nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture (Drama), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Film Editing. Film Critic Roger Ebert called it “FLAWLESS” and it was also named Best Picture of the Year by the Washington, D.C. Film Critics, Boston Film Critics and Chicago Film Critics to just name a few. This is a serious contender for walking away with the most “Oscars” this weekend and it’s for a very good reason. The reason is that this film is very solid, intense with a good screenplay that will keep you interested all the way through and is also some of the most intriguing work The Coen Brothers have done yet. This is a definite MUST SEE film, do yourself a favor and give it a watch, see what all the talk really is about.
Video Quality on this release is 1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte Dual-Layered) Blu-ray Disc. First thing I’ll start off with saying is this film has amazing cinematography as it is, it’s transferred (translates) nicely into Hi-Def here. We get a very solid black level to the picture, at times some film grain and noise but never any real problems with compression issues like artifacts or pixilation. There’s a somewhat vibrant color palette which shows off the beautiful backgrounds as the cinematography was clearly aiming to do and flesh tones are perfect. There’s a great amount of detail to be found here in the Hi-Def video presentation, it has a very pristine clear picture quality to it just as the studio claims their Blu-ray titles do in advertisements (usually that start up at the beginning of all Buena Vista Blu-ray titles).
It’s safe to say this has some really nice (yet disturbing at times) visuals to go along with the awesome (Oscar nominated) film. Honestly, it’s no surprise to me that I’m giving this a “4.5 Star Rating” for video quality. It didn’t totally “blow me away” but it came pretty damn close, I’ll say that much! Great job on this transfer from Disney‘s Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
Audio Quality on this release is in PCM 5.1 @4.6Mbps and Dolby Digital 5.1 @640kbps. The most important thing to start off noting here is that this is totally a dialogue driven film in the sense that it has absolutely no Score or Soundtrack (music) at all. It’s obviously very important that it be delivered clearly. Safe to report, this has no problems what-so-ever with delivering the dialogue, it comes across PERFECTLY.
Sound effects times come across really well in the rear channel surround presence but aren’t really present that often throughout the film. You’ll usually only hear something come out of the rear channels in the more climatic scenes of the film. The sound effects (along with the film’s plot) are sure to leave you on the edge of your seat throughout the film and maybe even jumping out of your seat as well. The sound of gunshots (even when a silencer is being used) come across very intense and grab your attention in a very lifelike manner. My favorite sound effect in the film has to be the air canister that the “Anton Chigurh” character (played by Javier Bardem) uses throughout his rampage. I will say the overall sound quality here is pretty much perfect but without any type of music to go with it or such it doesn’t really impress me enough to earn higher than a “4.5 Star Rating” but that’s nothing to complain about by any means.
Bonus Materials are sadly only presented in 480i Standard Definition MPEG-2 video quality and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound quality.
- “Working with the Coens: Reflections of Cast and Crew” (8 minutes) starts out with Javier Bardem discussing how he wanted to work with them and how excited he was to do this film. We get more interviews with the cast and crew obviously as well as the two guys themselves, Joel and Ethan Coen.
- “The Making of No Country For Old Men” (24 minutes) includes obvious interviews with Joel and Ethan Coen discussing what inspired them to make this into a movie and the stuff that happened to make it a reality. This includes interviews with the main cast Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin.
- “Diary of a County Sheriff” (7 minutes) obviously focuses on our main character in the film played by Tommy Lee Jones (“Sheriff Bell“) and shows some comparisons between him and our criminal “Anton Chigurh” played by Javier Bardem.
Overall these bonus materials are very much worth watching yet do lack an audio commentary with the Coen Brothers and just don’t feel 100% complete here. This is screaming “Double Dip” and with the 8 Oscar Nominations, I don’t doubt we’ll probably see this re-released in a “Special Edition” Blu-ray Disc by year end maybe. This only earns a “2 ½ Star Rating” for bonus materials, not a huge disappointment but then again nothing totally amazing either.
Blu-ray Disc packaging:
Screenshots:
NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.
