Joel and Ethan Coen's first film since their leaden remake of The Ladykillers is an exceptional return to their Blood Simple roots, offering up a crime saga in which money is almost as irresistible as bad choices are inevitable. Their cynical streak finds its perfect complement in Cormac McCarthy's gloomy tale of Biblical-scale chaos in 1980 Texas, and yet the Coens nonetheless locate the black comedy hidden within the acclaimed author's terse, punctuation-sparse prose. Brusque exchanges and austere violence are the story's stock-in-trade, with both elements so downbeat and harsh that they occasionally veer close to absurdity, thereby providing the filmmaking siblings with opportunities to wryly alleviate the oppressive despair and viciousness that hovers over the proceedings in the same way that the enormous Western landscape and its weighty silence hang over its human inhabitants. As Tommy Lee Jones's sheriff Ed Tom Bell says in reference to a particularly grim anecdote, "I laugh sometimes. 'Bout the only thing you can do."