The weakest moments in Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men are on display in its trailer. They’re the lines that build up Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh into “some kind of ultimate badass,” and I suppose for the purposes of a trailer this is all right. But at feature length, those moments are unnecessary and even intrusive, like the filmmakers waving a flag to get the audience’s attention. They are the few moments where the Coen Brothers forget that cardinal rule of storytelling: Show, don’t tell.

But for the vast majority of No Country for Old Men, the Coens trust their script and actors to say everything that needs to be said without coming right out and saying it. They’re right to do so. I have a lukewarm feeling about their body of work, but one thing you can never fault (except for, say, Intolerable Cruelty) is their ambition. Here it pays off. Bardem is one of the finest actors alive, and his Chigurh (don’t ever pronounce it “sugar”) is a frightening apparition, more elemental than human. I saw this movie back to back with Eastern Promises, and I’m hard-pressed to think of any character in recent history with more predatory menace than Chigurh or Viggo Mortensen’s Nikolai.

The story is simple, more a crucible for its characters than a step-by-step sequence of events. In the vast wasteland of West Texas, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) comes across the still-life aftermath of a drug deal gone badly awry. Bodies and trucks littered with bullets form a rough circle. The drugs are present but the money seems to be gone; with a bit of handy tracking, Llewelyn finds the man with the cash a few hundred yards away, dead from a gunshot wound to the gut. No one got away alive.

Moss takes the money and runs, as perhaps many people would do, but not before denying mercy to the one dying survivor of the shoot-out. He regrets that decision and returns later that night with water for the dying man. This little act of mercy is what gets him discovered and, eventually, hunted by the dead dealers’ associates and Chigurh himself. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, doing the Tommy Lee Jones thing) follows in the wake of Chigurh’s and Llewelyn’s bloody trail, but never seems to get very close to them. Perhaps he doesn’t want to.

What follows is a hunt, plain and simple. We find out Moss was an Army Colonel during the Vietnam War, so he knows something of survival. He’s clever and not particularly moral, which earns him some narrow escapes. But Chigurh will not be denied, and the bloody path he cuts through the unforgiving and barren Texas landscape reveals a curious code of ethics. Each near-miss and near-hit encounter Moss survives reveals more of each of them, like an archaeologist’s brush on covered bone.

Moss wears the damage and inexperience badly. Chigurh remains unfazed and implacable. Our faith in Moss’ survival as the protagonist (“hero” seems the wrong word) is shaken. Something curious happens, somewhere around the midpoint of the film: At first we follow Moss, see his actions, his thought processes, his craftiness in the face of peril. But No Country for Old Men becomes less about Moss and more about Chigurh, studying him, observing him, confronting and finally accepting that there is no one who can stop him. Not the inexperienced, not the experienced, not even accidents of fate. He is as ruthless and unforgiving as the land itself.

In a setting so stark, the performances are where the color comes from. The cast appoints itself well. Familiar character actors fill in the landscape between Moss and Chugarh, ranging from sleazy bounty hunter Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) to Moss’ wife Carla (Kelly Macdonald, who brings sweetness – or is that naiveté? – to the Worried Wife routine). The Coens have a fondness for rural accents and dialect, one that can sometimes derail a picture. Not so here. Even as the story creeps toward the mythical, the characters remain grounded. To this lifelong Texan, they struck true, simply as people marked by a time and place but not defined by it.

No Country for Old Men came out of the Toronto International Film Festival heaped in praise. I wouldn’t call it the Coen’s best, or even the year’s best, but it is significant and worth your time. Its apparent simplicity masks a deeper thematic complexity. No, “complexity” isn’t the right word. All the working pieces are right there for you to see. No Country for Old Men has thematic richness, some of which is only becoming apparent to me now. This may warrant a second viewing.