Photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage.com

Brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, the writing and directing team behind Fargo, have often grappled with the darker side of human nature, and they've found perfect source material in Cormac McCarthy's blood-soaked novel No Country for Old Men, a fable about the new American West. The result is a suspensful yet ruminative film graced by spectacular landscapes and cinematography. Josh Brolin is Llewelyn Moss, a Texas hunter who stumbles across $2 million in drug money, only to be pursued by an assassin (Javier Bardem) with a philosophical streak. Tommy Lee Jones plays the appealing, profoundly decent Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (shades of Fargo police chief Marge Gunderson), who also sets out after Moss, even as he senses that he may be on the losing side.