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Throughout the film's long theatrical run, Rudin and Miramax Films kept reminding auds, critics and Oscar voters of that literary and cinematic pedigree.

The Coens delivered a movie -- complete with chilling violence and a cryptic ending -- that reviewers loved, from the Cannes fest in May through year-end critics' group kudos.

After "No Country" opened Nov. 9 on 28 screens, critics' groups from Phoenix, Chicago and Boston to Washington and New York kept voting for the picture, the Coens and Javier Bardem. The movie also racked up noms and wins from the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and the industry craft guilds and landed eight noms from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

"What kept it fresh was that it kept winning things," observed marketer Terry Press. "Nobody came along to unseat Javier Bardem."

Like last year's best picture Oscar-winner, Martin Scorsese's "The Departed," it helped that "No Country" was not only a smart quality film for adults but a kick-ass R-rated action thriller for young males.

"No Country" pits a resourceful anti-hero (Josh Brolin) against a relentless killer with a moral code -- and a bolt pistol. "Call it -- friendo," says Bardem's chilling Anton Chigurh, as a man's life rests on a coin toss.

Chigurh is the "something I don't understand" that Tommy Lee Jones' Sheriff Bell is unwilling to meet and fight. "I don't know what it is anymore," he says at the start of the movie. "More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard."

"No Country" resonated in the culture and became a must-see because it was more than a conventional action movie with a satisfying climax. "It's about danger," Scott Rudin told Daily Variety. "We can't ever be safe. No matter how well we live, that does not mean that something isn't going to show up and change your life in a bad way. It's political too: it's the presence of evil in the face of good."

While many moviegoers objected to -- and endlessly debated -- the film's puzzling fade-to-black finale, you could argue that the critics would not have embraced an audience-friendly alternative. Miramax's marketing campaign delicately balanced the film's high culture against its crowd-pleasing genre elements.

Finally, the film industry rewarded the brothers Coen for a long career navigating the Hollywood system while keeping their dignity, identity and creative freedom intact. They have gotten away with their sanguine, wryly comic movies by co-writing the scripts themselves, keeping costs down, retaining final cut and working with appreciative producers and studios.

After a couple of studio detours with "Intolerable Cruelty" and "The Ladykillers," the Coens returned to writing mode on "No Country" with their gritty instincts intact.They kept the film quiet and intense, slashing away McCarthy's Texas-twanged dialogue in service of better visual storytelling and an effective minimal soundtrack. ("No Country"'s $30 million cost was split by Paramount Vantage and Miramax.)

The Coens are not resting on their laurels. In the can for Working Title is the dark spy spoof "Burn After Reading" co-starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt. The '70s drama "A Serious Man" starts filming in September in Minnesota. Frances McDormand stars with a local cast. And the Coens are already writing another adaptation for Rudin, Michael Chabon's Alaska-set alternate history, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union."

Click here to view best picture nominees' box office numbers and Oscar wins by film.