Actors Josh Brolin (from left), Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem don't share much screen time in "No Country For Old Men." (Jim Cooper / Associated Press)

NEW YORK -- The men of "No Country for Old Men" are having a smoke.

Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin each light up while they gather in a back room at a Manhattan restaurant for the National Board of Review Awards.

The NBR Awards, which named the film the year's best picture, are just one of many to honor the Coen brothers' movie, adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel. "No Country" is nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture and best supporting actor for Bardem.

"No Country" has grossed more than any previous Coen film, an unlikely financial success for a violent, somber allegory of a movie.

Each character is symbolic. Bardem's Anton Chigurh is a prophet of destruction with the hair of Prince Valiant. Brolin's Llewlyn Moss is greed; he attempts to take a found suitcase of money for himself. And Jones' Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is justice -- a wise man trying to make sense of a new violence.

Similarly, in person, they appear archetypes of masculinity. Among the trio, Brolin is the wry jokester; Bardem is the affable, sensitive one; and Jones is the dour, sarcastic elder statesman.

AP: Though Joel Coen has said this is a film about three men, you're never seen together on screen. In fact, any two of you hardly appear together.

Jones: Not once.

Brolin: Or once, but without any dialogue.

Jones: But we're a terrific ensemble, as you can see (all laugh).

AP: Did you have that sense that you were an ensemble when making it, even if you didn't have dialogue together?

Jones: Albuquerque is a really hard place to work. It's very noisy. There are crows there, planes, trucks, people working on their cars. It's just a noisy place to shoot. It's a little quieter in West Texas.

That's about all we dealt with, is trying to do the best we could and work around the noise of Albuquerque and the topographical features of West Texas. I suppose that made us an ensemble, but it's not as if we walked around a drawing room exchanging witticisms.

AP: Javier, how do you prepare for a character like (Chigurh), who's less a normal person and more an embodiment of violence?

Bardem: The only difference that I had in approaching the character is not really worrying about the backstory of the character: where he's coming from, if his mommy fed him well when he was 10. It was about how to bring this iconic and symbolic idea of what violence represents into human fear -- which was a difficult task because it's very easy to get lost in the machine, in the Terminator side of it.

AP: Many have also been unsure of how to react to the ending (a scene in which Jones' character gives a long soliloquy). How did you approach that scene?

Jones: I worked at it every day, several times a day, because it was poetic and you wanted to get the rhythms right and try to embody in the performance all that it might imply as a work of literature and hopefully cinema. And worked at it real hard. Are you asking me what it meant?

AP: No.

Jones: Good. Because it means what it means. It says what it says. It's pretty straightforward.

- By Jake Coyle / Associated Press