Cormac McCarthy's 2005 neo-Western novel No Country for Old Men received mixed critical reception upon its release. Critics couldn't determine how much of the novel, particularly the character of Sheriff Bell, was meant in earnest and how much of it was a pastiche of the hard-boiled crime novel. There was no mistaking the overwhelmingly positive critical response to McCarthy's next novel, The Road, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Since then, No Country has been adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, claiming the honor of Best Picture, by Joel and Ethan Coen.
The novel is set near the Texas–Mexico border in 1980 and tells the story of a drug deal gone wrong. The plot follows the three interconnected paths of Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh, and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell as in-fighting amongst cartels turn all of their lives inside-out.
Joel and Ethan Coen, known as the Coen Brothers, described the process of adapting the film as reasonably easy, joking that one brother would read the book aloud while the other copied it in screenplay form, indicating the quality of McCarthy's writing. The film would win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Javier Barden (for antagonist Anton Chigurh), and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Since its initial poor reviews, critics and audiences alike have considerably warmed up to the novel. Says The New York Times Book Review critic Walter Kim of McCarthy: "'[The author is] a whiz with the joystick, a master-level gamer who changes screens and situations every few pages."
