After their last three movies which garnered tepid responses at best, Joel and Ethan Coen have restored their reputation as masters of the craft with their latest project and this year’s most Oscar-worthy film.

The brothers, who wrote, directed and edited “No Country For Old Men,” adapted the screenplay from Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name.

The story follows the pursuit of Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) in the midlands of 1980 Texas. While hunting, Moss stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug sale gone awry. The participants are dead, lying in the middle of the desert beside guns, shells and the bodies of attack dogs. Moss follows the trail of one casualty to the base of a tree, where he finds a suitcase containing $2 million.

He sends his wife Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald) off to her mother’s, grabs his guns and the money and leaves behind his trailer home and pickup, in hopes of escaping the unknown owners of the money but fully prepared for a new war.

A solitary hit man, contracted by one of the drug sale parties, is already fast on his trail, hunting Moss with the intention of keeping the money for himself.

Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, a true sociopath who ruthlessly stalks his prey, wasting anyone who stands in his way.

Tommy Lee Jones grabs viewers with one of his best performances to date as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. The weathered law man, a keeper of order in a quiet corner of the state, is forced to face the reality of the burgeoning border cocaine trade, as its inherent violence shatters his routine and sends him on Moss’ trail, hoping to save him from the hell he’s brought down on himself.

Brolin portrays Moss as one of the rugged ingenious cowboys of American Western lore. Bardem convincingly plays the killer Chigurh, a dark-skinned foreigner, who, as exemplified by his Middle Ages haircut, is a man in his own world. Even minor characters, such as sheriff’s deputies, motel clerks and gas station attendants, make their mark on this dark and surrealistic thriller.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins is responsible for much of the sense of finality and dread that fills the viewer throughout the movie.

Deakins is no stranger to the Coens’ style, having worked with the brothers on a number of their releases, including “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski,” each of which is defined by its unique visual narratives.

The opening scenes of “No Country” illustrate a land devoid of almost all life, a Texas wasteland that’s no stranger to disappearing motorists or drug deals. Foreshadowing his relentless pursuit by Chigurh, Llewelyn, following the trail of a wounded antelope, walks across miles of barren land, his stolid figure dwarfed by the desert’s immensity.

Deakin’s shots seem to evolve with the pace of the Coens’ work, cutting closer and closer to each character until there’s no escaping their current predicament. As the assassin closes in on Moss and the money, the camera is part of the action, letting the tension build as characters hide in the shadows of lonely forgotten motels or in the no man’s land of border crossings.

Yet in other scenes, the audience witnesses the certainty and existentialism that define both Sheriff Bell and the sociopath hit man, as the camera detaches itself from the heroes’ plight.

A fixed shot of Chigurh exiting a pretty suburban house and calmly checking the soles of his boots for blood is one of the more emotionally jarring moments of the film, despite the brutal murder.

The story’s setting only strengthens this theme; in the year 2007, we can look back at the beginning of the drug war with the grim knowledge that no side would ever rise victorious, but each would still spill its fair share of blood.

The film’s emotionless villain offers an aging gas station clerk a choice: heads or tails. Unbeknownst to him, his life hangs in the balance.

Chigurh tells him the quarter, Chigurh, and he have all come together in that time and place simply because they had to.

“No Country” avoids shoving any agenda down your throat, but even its simple statements on temptation and self-compulsion are not minimized or overshadowed by the intense violence.

Even in the midst of an extended shoot-out between Moss and Chigurh, one is not filled with the familiar adrenaline rush of standard action fare – the violence seems to hit the viewer on a perverse level: we play the willing voyeur, but we are not supposed to enjoy what we are watching.

Bystanders are gunned down or face the receiving end of a pneumatic slaughtering machine (Chigurh’s weapon of choice alongside his silenced shotgun), cars blow up on busy streets and gunshots ring in the dead of night in sleepy small towns.

No law binds the main characters, nor do they fear the repercussions of their actions.

We are not supposed to enjoy what’s happening because the characters simply do not care about anything other than money and blood.

The dead could have easily been one of us with a hole punched in their foreheads in the beautiful, deadly American desert.

John Sequeira can be reach at [email protected].