This film is based on the 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy. The opening scenes of a vast and expansive American landscape silhouetted against dawn become a metaphor for the film: a gothic exploration of fascism, while throwing light on the desperate need for man to collectively wake-up. All the while, narration by the local sheriff, bemoans the fact that crime is becoming more and more violent....that crime is no longer what it used to be.

Central to the story is Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a hired assassin who ruthlessly pursues his prey with singular determination. This pursuit is tinged with fatalism rather than fanaticism. He is so much imbued with his raison d'être that he becomes the archetype of Evil. In the course of his detours in pursuit of his aim, he takes out whoever crosses his path....or not....relying on the toss of a coin (Fate) to excuse his distasteful link to compassion.

For him NOT TO KILL is nothing short of a denial of who he IS.

This clear cut understanding of who he is, enables him to carry out his executions with a mixture of irked impatience and trigger happy fatality. So his victims plea of "you dont have to do this" becomes utterly meaningless to him. In this sense he sees himself as little more than the Grim Reaper who exhibits an unexpected morality: if YOU cross his path it could only be because YOU, like HIM, are TAINTED if not directly, then by association. He is simply the magnet.

This point is deftly proven in the scintillating scene between him and a remote candy store owner whom he discovers (through pointed cross-questioning) has married money - concluding that his marriage was motivated by greed.

All the old men he encounters (hence the title?) are blatantly 'asleep' which he equates as being amoral: they are standing so close to evil, yet are completely oblivious to it, to HIM, and therefore disposable. It is in these scenes that the Coen brothers juxtapose and illuminate inner and outer realities so brilliantly and echo those fascinating scenes (though for obviously different reasons and within a totally despicable context) captured in Herzogs Nosferatu with the unforgettable Klaus Kinski. (The previous Nosferatu: a Symphony of Horror with Max Schreck was equally as charismatic.) Bardem is a worthy winner of best supporting actor and it is no mean feat to have crossed this divide from ancient to modern gothic so effectively yet stripped of all romanticism.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is the welder and hunter who, in following up on a wounded prey while hunting, stumbles upon a drug deal that had gone horribly wrong. Dead bodies rotting unceremoniously. He realises there must be money somewhere, and with astonishing alacrity, locates it. It is of interest to mention Moss opening scene where he is taking aim at his prey, for this surely is yet another metaphor within the film that transcends similar scenes from other films: Moss lacks a true killers instinct for he wavers slightly and thus wounds the animal. It is this lack of a killers instinct which inadvertently steers him towards the shootout and makes him no match for Chigurh. However, he has a certain amount of street savvy, and very soon discovers the radar sensor that enables Chigurh to track him so effortlessly, stacked inside the satchel of money.

But of course it is Chigurh himself who is the radar meter whose antennae are not going to be in the least bit phased by this hiccup in consciousness.

Bell, a Texas sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) is duty bound to pursue justice and does so without the slightest zeal. When we encounter him through his opening narrative, he quite clearly feels overwhelmed by the persistent and ever changing face of evil. He is an honourable man but not extraordinary, and has pursued justice without personal motive - he is not driven by vendetta, by righteous vengeance or any of the characteristics that seem to have become the hallmark of so many characters in cop movies.

In the context of this film he is untainted and it is therefore telling that he and Chigurh never meet. However, this latest episode proves the last straw and he resigns. In the closing narrative he relates two disturbing dreams he had to his wife ending with "and then I woke up". There is an immediate blackout and the film ends.

To me, the ordinariness of this closing statement, probably used by every person who has ever related a dream, throws the entire audience on the spot in a brilliant coup de grâce of film making.

And, according to the Coens, if I am not mistaken, it is within the beguiling veneer of ordinariness that many people disclaim any responsibility for their part in the woes of the world.