THE Coen brothers haven't really been on top form since they made their bona fide masterpiece Fargo back in 1995.

That's not to say that Joel and Ethan haven't made a few good films since, it's just they weren't quite up to the high standards they set themselves with great movies like that and Miller's Crossing.

But after waiting the best part of 13 years, the pair are back with a bang with the excellent No Country For Old Men, adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy's violent neo-Western.

Like Fargo and Miller's Crossing, this is a complicated crime caper and has much in common with those two earlier films. It is superbly grafted, sharp, bleak yet somehow beautiful, sometimes senselessly violent but it also has a tender heart.

The film is set in Texas in 1980 and when Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out hunting, he stumbles upon the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone horribly wrong.

Llewellyn takes the money but things start to go seriously awry when the relentless steely killer (Javier Bardem) is on his trail, intent on recovering the booty at all costs.