Do we get the film violence we deserve? That seems to be the critical consensus on the Coen brothers latest, No Country for Old Men, which opens in theaters today and has been almost universally praised. Based on Cormac McCarthy's novel and by all accounts faithful to it, the film is essentially an extended chase sequence: a guy takes a bunch of money and another guy tries to get it back. It's also very, very violent.

It is the fashion now to admire violence on film if it is cathartic, or metaphorical. No Country will "force us to look into an abyss of our own making," writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone; it is "a philosophical meditation about the roots and nature of violence as an integral part of the American Way of Life," according to Emanuel Levy; and Kenneth Turan notes on WNYC that "the Coen brothers and McCarthy are not interested in violence for its own sake, but for what it says about the world we live in."

When film violence seems to stand for something, as it does in No Country or in David Cronenberg's last two films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, we feel more comfortable expressing admiration for it. When it doesn't, as in Saw or Hostel, we are forced to treat the entire genre of such films – in this case "torture porn" – as representative of, well, something bad.

The presentation of violence can be divided, roughly, into three categories: cartoonish, stylized and naturalistic. Some filmmakers are adept at all three: Quentin Tarantino is responsible for Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction and the Deathproof segment of Grindhouse. 

Other examples are playing this month on AMC. Compare and contrast! The cartoonish – Married to the Mob, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The stylized – The Quick and the Dead, Psycho. And the naturalistic – Glory, Casualties of War.