Every Best Picture Oscar Movie Winner Of 21st Century Ranked Worst To Best
2. No Country For Old Men (2007)
Should have won!
Adapting any Cormac McCarthy novel for the big screen seems like an exercise in futility, but the Coen Brothers made it look remarkably easy when they made No Country for Old Men, a nerve-shredding tale of human evil and lawlessness wrapped inside a nail-biting cat-and-mouse thriller.
The cat in this equation is indomitable assassin Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a sociopathic killer on the trail of a rancher (Josh Brolin) who’s fled the scene of a fatal drug deal with a stash of money. The other cat is Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who follows the carnage left in the pair’s wake and is left pondering the violence of man.
Horribly intense and gorgeously shot, No Country for Old Men is macabre and menacing, full to bursting with some of the Coen Brothers’ most inspired sequences - from a mid-film shootout between Bardem and Brolin, to Jones’ hauntingly ambiguous closing monologue - as well as their stunning, lonely use of the baron Texan desert.
Arguably the finest film in the Brothers' exceptional back catalogue, this particular modern classic would be the greatest Best Picture winner of the 21st century were it not for one other movie...