365 Days. 365 Films.

After a drug exchange goes wrong, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across the dealers’ bodies in rural Texas, along with 2 million dollars in cash. Instead of handing over the money to the police, he keeps it for himself and when cold blooded killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) finds out, he’s fast on his trail. Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, this is a cinematic masterpiece and a spectacular adaptation from the novel by Cormac McCarthy.

Bardem is brilliantly cast in his role as an unstoppable murderer, providing a deeper acknowledgement to his character than the novel cares to give. Similarly, to Bardem’s cold hearted rendition, Brolin delves deeper into his character in more ways than one. Being the focal point of both the novel and the film, Moss is characterized with great integrity in both, however Josh Brolin suits this part so well, and is so attuned with Moss throughout, it’s difficult to imagine anyone else in his place.

Due to the nature of the plot, a little more action would have gone down well, but considering the novel it is true to the original and, in this case especially, less is definitely more. Fans of the novel would find that this film is a direct likeness to both the plot and the characters, however one difficulty in reading a novel before watching the film adaptation, I find, is that you often have a completely different presentation of the characters in your head and are therefore disappointed when you see they’re nothing like what you thought. There were no problems here regarding this as the film was surprisingly fluid when it came to interpreting the novel. There were a few added extras along the way from what I (don’t) remember from the novel but they only strengthened the narrative, and never distracted from it.