10 Most Essential Coen Brothers Films

10. No Country For Old Men

Start as you mean to go on—we’re sticking this brutal contemporary western deconstruction right at the top of this list for numerous reasons, first and foremost because they were deservedly be hell to pay if it weren’t on here.

Adapted from Blood Meridian author Cormac McCarthy’s unsparing story of the same name, this singularly bleak western adds a frisson of the brothers’ trademark black humour to proceedings, but the hopeless, near biblical nihilism of the source text is very much intact here.

Javier Bardem offers a career-best turn as the stoic hitman pursuing Josh Brolin's live wire protagonist, and the future Thanos reminds us how great he is in this sort of genre fare as he embodies a nervy, intense anti-hero we can’t help but root for even as the bodies begin to pile up.

But this film belongs to Tommy Lee Jones, whose closing monologue is amongst the most haunting moments in noughties cinema and earns this film its reputation as one of the brothers’ best.