USA: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin attend Los Angeles premiere of "No Country for Old Men"

Joel and Ethan Coen bring their trademark dark humor to the big-screen version of acclaimed novel "No Country For Old Men," a modern American western style film starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin. The novel, written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Cormac McCarthy, is an updated version of a good guy vs. bad guy story set near the desolate Texas-Mexico border in the 1980s, and proved to be excellent source material for the Coen brothers, whose films regularly tend to delve into the seedier side of life in America. "Oh, I remember thinking as soon as I read it that, gosh, this looks like the treatment for a screenplay, I wonder why Cormac did that, and my second thought was, this reads like the best treatment for a screenplay that I've ever read, and then thirdly I thought that he's got something on his mind, which could be rather important," says actor Tommy Lee Jones, recalling his thoughts while reading McCarthy's novel. "No Country for Old Men" tells the story of Llewelyn Moss (Brolin), who by fortune or misfortune stumbles upon a large sum of money from a drugs deal gone bad, which starts a deadly chain reaction of events as Moss is pursued by a violent killer (Bardem) who wields a gun that uses pressurized air to kill its victims. Following the case is an aging, disillusioned Texas sheriff (Jones) who is powerless to stop the mysterious mastermind killer who flips coins for human lives. Javier Bardem, who worked closely with the Coens in bringing his character to life, offered his insight on adapting such a descriptive novel for the big screen. "Well, I think that everything's on the page of the novel, and it was kind of our duty, the Coen and I, to try to find a way to portray him physically since philosophically or emotionally, or intellectually, extremely well-described in the novel, but it was wide open to interpretation how to portray the guy, basically," says actor Javier Bardem on bringing his character, the cold-blooded killer Anton Chigurh to life in "No Country For Old Men." The film, which was shot on location in Texas and New Mexico, uses the desolate landscapes of the American west to add to the haunting story told in "No Country For Old Men," which actor Josh Brolin allowed to shape his performance as desperate man committing what he thinks to be the perfect crime. "Everything. It became, that's the great thing about the Coens, that the landscape became a character unto itself, you know? You look at "Fargo," you look at "O Brother Where Art Thou?" and you know, it becomes a full-blown, multi-faceted character, and you know, me, I don't have a lot of dialogue in this film, so you're reacting off the land, the terrain -- mean, bad, bad, horrible," says actor Josh Brolin on the landscapes used in "No Country For Old Men." "No Country For Old Men" debuted strongly at the Toronto Film Festival in September and received positive reception shortly after that at the Venice Film Festival. It opens in a limited release in the United States on November 9.

ITN Source | November 8, 2007

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