No Country for Old Men 19th anniversary and Best Westerns ranking, Digi Mart USA News: Nineteen years ago today, a Tommy Lee Jones movie that featured one of the best performances of his acclaimed career was released. Since then, No Country for Old Men has repeatedly been celebrated as one of the “Best Westerns of All Time” and praised by many as a masterpiece.
Regular moviegoers got their first chance to watch No Country for Old Men when it received a limited release in America on November 9, 2007. After a handful of early premieres, it received a wide release later that month.
The movie went on to become a major hit. According to IMDb, it brought in more than $171 million at the worldwide box office on an estimated $25 million budget.
Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men featured an all-star cast that included Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald, and Woody Harrelson. The film, which was based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, became a critical darling and currently holds an impressive 93% Rotten Tomatoes score.
No Country for Old Men earned a staggering number of accolades during a slew of awards shows that took place at the time. Most notably, it was nominated for eight Oscars and won four of them for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
There are several reasons the film earned so many awards, including the compelling and unsettling presence of Javier Bardem’s iconic villain, Anton Chigurh. Tommy Lee Jones was also pitch-perfect as a grizzled sheriff thrust into investigating shocking crimes.
Similarly, Josh Brolin’s portrayal of Llewelyn Moss was pivotal since it made it easy for viewers to empathize with his character. Perhaps most of all, Cormac McCarthy’s story and the Coen Brothers’ direction were the building blocks of what made the movie so special that it has gone down in Hollywood history.
In February 2024, Esquire published a list of the “28 Best Westerns of All Time” and included No Country for Old Men. Later, in June 2024, Fandango published a ranking of the “Best Western Movies of All Time,” which was based on Rotten Tomatoes scores and featured the movie at No. 13.
The film has also appeared in a slew of similar lists, and it was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2024. That is a registry that preserves copies of movies of major cultural significance to safeguard them for future generations.
