It's not easy to pinpoint exactly what makes this nihilistic film a masterpiece.

Perhaps it's the plot of a drug deal gone wrong and a Vietnam vet (Josh Brolin) trying to escape with crime-scene millions. Perhaps it's all in the devastating villain Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Perhaps it's the coolly philosophical way Sheriff Bell chases them both down. Perhaps it's the fact that the first 45 minutes of the film don't have a single note of background music, and yet have you at the edge of your seat. Perhaps it's the way Roger Deakins recreates the bland expanse of Texas circa 1980. Perhaps its the sparse dialogue and the constant unpredictability of both plot and morality.

Or perhaps it's just that the brothers Coen know how to weave sheer magic, and end up with an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel that is bleaker than the original book. Both suspense and human drama are explored masterfully by the filmmakers, and the film benefits greatly from that everyday banality they inject into each scene.

Even when it's the baddest villain you've seen in years. Chigurh, armed with a memorably horrid haircut, snarls with unbridled hostility at a typically smalltalking gas store owner. Soon the compulsively gum-popping Chigurh grins and runs rings around the hapless shopkeeper, pitting his rhetoric against the shopman's generic answers. And after a while, in one of the finest scenes in modern English cinema, Anton asks him to toss a coin.

Check out the video, and listen to Chigurh explaining the shopkeeper's odds.

Incredible.

Also Read: The Oscar Review

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