We know from their wordy, reference-laden films that Joel and Ethan Coen have read a few books in their time. Before now, however, they had never based a film directly on a literary source. That has changed with their 12th movie, No Country for Old Men, which is adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel, and faithfully adapted, at that.

The story, in which the theft of a large amount of money has violent consequences, may seem a typical Coen plot, redolent of their films Blood Simple and Fargo, but it’s pretty much straight from McCarthy. Even the dialogue, though it often sounds as if it could have been written only by the Coens, comes mainly from the book. But none of this means the Coens are coasting. This is a fine piece of film-making. A tense thriller with a dusty Texan ambi-ence and a melancholy tone, it is skilfully put together and features a wonderful bit of casting: Javier Bardem in the bad-guy role.

The Spanish star plays Anton Chigurh, a clean-up man for a vaguely defined drug-trafficking operation. He carries a terrifying weapon: a device designed to kill cattle, it uses high-pressure air to blast a steel bolt into the skull. With this, he not only murders people with calm efficiency, but punches out any door locks that lie between him and his victims. He also has a scary method of toying with people while deciding what to do to them. But what secures him a place among cinema’s unforgettable psychos is Bardem’s performance. Even beneath Chigurh’s awful haircut (the sort of thing favoured by foot-ballers in the 1970s), Bardem’s monumental face is menacing. On the rare occasions when Chigurh smiles, he presents a slack,teeth-concealing grin that would unnerve a shark. For good measure, he has a voice the grim reaper might envy. In previous English-speaking roles, Bardem has sometimes been hard to understand, but there is no such problem here – a small mercy for the unfortunates Chigurh picks on. He’s not somebody to whom you’d want to say: “Pardon?” It’s 1980, and Chigurh arrives in a barren part of Texas in the wake of a drug deal that went awry. Before he can retrieve the missing $2m, it is found by a hard-up Vietnam veteran, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who tries to make off with it. In the long chase that follows, the Coens deliver a series of unusual and dynamic action sequences, including Moss swimming down a river, pursued by a hunting dog; a suspenseful near-encounter between him and Chigurh at a motel;and a shoot-out in which the silencer on Chigurh’s shotgun giveshis bullets a sinister quietness matching that of the man himself.

In between these flash points, the plot isn’t always as clearly outlined as it might have been, but the film never loses momentum. The brothers display their usual visual artistry and sense of rhythm, and they make good use of silence, creating a thick, oppressive soundlessness in the deserts and small towns where the story takes place. Along the way, Moss has a few scenes with his wife (Kelly Macdonald) that reveal him to be likeable, despite his truculence. And, even though this is one of the Coens’ least comic films, there are several funny touches.

Only in the last few scenes does the film weaken. The account of Chigurh’s pursuit of Moss ends in a deliberate anticlimax, and the focus shifts to Ed Tom Bell, an old sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) who, throughout the film, has been hoping to save Moss by finding him before anybody else does. Seeing the results of Chigurh’s savagery, Bell dejectedly ponders the terrible power with which evil sometimes makes itself felt in the world. Yet Chigurh doesn’t make us ponder that sort of thing. Creepy though he is, he’s still just a movie bogeyman, and whatever goes on around him is never going to have a deep feeling of realism. Bell’s despair is an artful alternative to the kind of ending usually found in chase thrillers, but, despite Jones’s excellent performance, it’s not poignant, and the Coens look a touch pretentious in dwelling on it for so long.

Some have called the film the brothers’ best work to date, but the contrast between the solemnly portrayed Bell and his equivalent in Fargo, the wittily sketched police chief played by Frances McDormand, leaves me preferring the earlier movie. Certainly, though, No Country for Old Men is a great return to form for the Coens. Even if you’ve never been a big fan of theirs, it’s a film you should see if you like a good thriller.

15, 122 mins

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