No Country is "Staggering," "Coen's Best Dark Film Ever"

Oh, but I do hate to say "I told you so."

Jeffrey Wells is reeling, raving, overwhelmed by the new Coen Brothers' movie.

This is going to be a difficult test of my patience. I'm going nuts here. I've got to see this thing.

And check out this review by Charles Ealy:

... Javier Bardem ably captures the pathological menace of Chigurh ... And Tommy Lee Jones, in one of his finest performances, stars as Sheriff Bell, the beleaguered lawman who is only able to watch as the carnage unfolds.

It’s by far the most violent Coen brothers film ever, surpassing the deadpan tree-shredding of bodies in Fargo. And it marks a return of the Coens to Texas, where they set their first feature film, Blood Simple. Like that movie, No Country delights in the unusual minor characters who pop up in scene after scene. You hate to see them gunned down, but you know it’s coming, just like a biblical plague.
...
It’s gratifying to see the Coen brothers turn their attention back to serious cinema. Fargo and Miller’s Crossing have always ranked among their best. And they couldn’t have chosen a better vehicle to get back to their roots.

UPDATE: And now this:

Is No Country For Old Men the best movie of the year, you ask? It's an unfair question, says I, because the year's not even half over. Screw it, I says a moment later, the thing's a near masterpiece.

And this:

Throughout, the Coens modulate their tone -- darkness with an extreme undercurrent of the absurd -- perfectly, at least until [Kelly] MacDonald's show-hick mom enters the picture. She's soon gone though, but by that point the picture itself has changed. It turns ruminant, elides what some might consider major high points of the story, and goes for something more deeply elegiac than anything the filmmakers have ever attempted before. I wasn't the only one thrown by this shift, but I want to let it work over me a little more. Even as I'm chewing on it while typing this, I've got a feeling I may be calling Country a full-fledged masterpiece after I catch it a second time. Or maybe even before then.

UPDATED SATURDAY 5/19:
The Guardian:

Midway through, I had this down as the brothers' best film since The Big Lebowski. By the end I was wondering if it might not be their masterpiece.

Okay, at last, here's something less than a rave. But I can't see how faithfulness to the novel could be a problem here...
Hollywood Reporter:

The film attains an extraordinary level of tension as a fiercely dedicated drug runner named Anton Chigurh, brilliantly played by Javier Bardem, pursues a man who has stumbled upon and taken his money. The Coens' typically superior filmmaking sustains the electrifying mood for most of the picture, but they are undone by being too faithful to the source novel by Cormac McCarthy.

But then there's Emmanuel Levy:

... a rather faithful adaptation of McCarthy's novel, its distinctly American themes, its rapid-fire pace, and its inky black comic tone. The Coens are able with their distinctive filmmaking skills to transform McCarthy's rich, wry, resonant, and often humorous storytelling into a bravura movie, based on striking images, crisp dialogue, darkly humorous tone, and splendid acting from all around.

It's hard to imagine a better match for the dusky wit and stark humanity of McCarthy’s characters than the Coens.

Variety:

No Country for Old Men

And finally, one of my favorite critics, Kenneth Turan:

This is a completely gripping nihilistic thriller, a model of impeccably constructed, implacable storytelling. All you could hope for in a marriage of the Coen brothers and McCarthy, it's a film that you can't stop watching, even though you very much wish you could as it escorts you through a world so horrifically bleak "you put your soul at hazard," as one character says, to be part of it.

UPDATED 5/21: Variety's Anne Thompson blogs:

No Country for Old Men Fargo Miller's CrossingRaising Arizona