Following on from 2000s O Brother, Where Art Thou? the Coen brothers seemed to hit something of a rough patch in their otherwise exemplary career as filmmakers, with Intolerable Cruelty, The Man Who Wasn't There and their misjudged remake of The Ladykillers failing to match their usual fine form. Fortunately, 2007's No Country For Old Men, adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, saw them returning to the quality of their best efforts in true style. On the surface a cat-and-mouse thriller in which a hitman is dispatched to hunt down the man who unwittingly stumbled across a suitcase full of drug money, the Coens - sticking closely to the source material - imbue the film with a grander sense of fate and destiny whilst ending on a daring note of ambiguity that irritated some in the audience but impressed many others. It finally earned them an Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director - something which many agree was a long time coming.
