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Ledger did extremely well in his short 28 years - Ang Lee, Christopher Nolan, Todd Haynes, Terry Gilliam - and he was becoming an increasingly hot ticket at the time of his death, and his performance in “ The Dark Knight” would surely have made him all the more so. One of the many tragic things about the passing of Heath Ledger was the thought of all the directors that the actor never got to work with that could have resulted in amazing work. The late Heath Ledger was offered the lead role of Llewellyn Moss. Let’s hope that the Coens are able to work the ever-excellent Strong into something else down the line.Ģ. But as it turns out, it didn’t matter, and Bardem was able to do it. The actor (then best known for a small role in Stephen Gaghan‘s “ Syriana“) told Total Film: “I was phoned one weekend and told, ‘Listen Javier’s dates don’t work,’ so for a few days I was thinking, ‘Wow, I‘m actually going to work with the Coen brothers.’ ” It’s unclear what Bardem’s potential conflict was, although “ Goya’s Ghosts” and “ Love In the Time of Cholera” both filmed around the same period. And for a time, it seemed that Bardem’s schedule wasn’t going to work out, and the Coens turned to another oft-villainous actor who had impressed in auditions, “ Sherlock Holmes” and “ Kick-Ass” star Mark Strong. And Bardem was the Coens’ first choice for the part, despite the Spanish actor telling them he hated violence, couldn’t drive, wasn’t comfortable speaking English and had never fired a gun. It’s almost impossible to imagine the film without Javier Bardem‘s Oscar-winning, bowl-cutted performance as the mysterious and psychopathic cattle gun-wielding murderer Anton Chigurh. Mark Strong was lined up to play Anton Chigurh when it looked like Javier Bardem might not be able to do it. The film hit theaters five years ago today, on November 9th 2007, and to mark the occasion, we’ve picked out five things you might not know about “No Country For Old Men.” Read on below.ġ. It was tremendously well received, became their most financially successful film up to that point, and won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, for Bardem, at the Academy Awards. Even after the major success of “ O Brother Where Art Thou” and the critical acclaim of “ The Man Who Wasn’t There,” they weren’t able to get their Brad Pitt-starring adaptation of James Dickey‘s WWII novel “ To the White Sea” financed, and two commercially-aimed star-laden pictures, “ Intolerable Cruelty” and “ The Ladykillers,” had disappointed financially and seen them pick up the worst reviews of their careers.īut that was all about to change, because at the Cannes Film Festival that year, the Coens premiered their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s brutal neo-Western “ No Country For Old Men,” the tale of an ordinary man ( Josh Brolin) who comes across the spoils of a drug deal gone bad, only to be hunted by a remorseless killer ( Javier Bardem), while a local sheriff ( Tommy Lee Jones) follows the trail of blood and destruction left behind them. The pursuit stretches up and down and across the border, each participant seemingly determined to answer what one asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?Ī harrowing story of a war that society is waging on itself, and an enduring meditation on the ties of love and blood and duty that inform lives and shape destinies, No Country for Old Men is a novel of extraordinary resonance and power.At the start of 2007, the Coen Brothers were not in a good place in their careers. One party in the failed transaction hires an ex-Special Forces officer to defend his interests against a mesmerizing freelancer, while on either side are men accustomed to spectacular violence and mayhem. But only after two more men are murdered does a victim's burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes how desperately Moss and his young wife need protection.
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Packing the money out, he knows, will change everything. Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Set in our own time along the bloody frontier between Texas and Mexico, this is Cormac McCarthy's first novel since Cities of the Plain completed his acclaimed, best-selling Border Trilogy.