Review of "No Country For Old Men"

See it? Yes, but first understand what you're getting into (keep reading).

I don't know how movie trailers are made, but I envision a bunch of marketing types in suits sitting in a boardroom brainstorming on how a movie should be pitched to audiences. After a bunch of whiteboarding and a few lattes, guys half their age wearing tee shirts and headphones go off to their Macs to make the vision a reality. There are a few iterations until the suits are happy at which point the trailer gets shipped off. The end result is often a work of art in and of itself, even though it most likely has very little to do with the movie it's supposed to be advertising. Trailers, after all, are marketing material designed to sell a movie. They are not designed to help viewers pick movies that are right for them. The purpose of trailer is to convince as many people as possible to see a movie as quickly as possible before word can spread about how crappy the movie actually is.

(If you have any doubts about the ability of a trailer to misrepresent a movie, just watch the preview for this wonderfully inspirational family film called Shining.)

My point is that No Country For Old Men is an excellent movie that, as its hart, is almost nothing like its trailer suggests. So misleading are the previews, in fact, that at least two people in the theater actually booed the ending. I admit to being somewhat confused by how the story ended myself (think Sopranos), however by the time I got to my car, it had sunk in enough that I thought I understood it. By the time I got home, I really liked it. And by the time I finished explaining the movie to my wife, I loved it and already wanted to watch it again.

I'll start with the easy points. The writing is great. The dialog is simultaneously fun, colorful, and eerie. The monologue at the beginning masterfully written and delivered by Tommy Lee Jones. And the acting and characters are, without exception, nearly flawless.

Now for the plot (don't worry -- no spoilers yet). No Country For Old Men is essentially about a drug deal that somehow goes south, a man who mistakenly comes across the money (Llewelyn Moss), and the attempt of a psychopathic killer (Anton Chigurh) to hunt him down. On the periphery, you have an old Texas Sheriff (Tom Bell) who is more trying to make sense of the violence than actually solve the case, and a combination hit man and bounty hunter (Carson Wells) who is hired to intervene. But don't confuse the plot with the meaning. As far as I can tell, there are no real heroes in No Country. There is no crescendo which builds up to a climax from which the good guys triumphantly walk away. In fact, I'm not entirely sure there are really any good guys. There is only misdirection and unpredictability, which I believe are the primary themes of the movie.

Now I think it's only fair that I issue a spoiler alert as I have to give a few things away in order to delve further into the meaning of the movie. However, I guarantee that you'll appreciate No Country far more with your expectations properly set.

The title of the movie clearly relates to the Sheriff, and to most of the other law enforcement officers in the story. Although Bell is certainly a sharp investigator, he is completely unprepared for the relentless violence of drug related crime. Not only are the Sheriff and his deputies outgunned, but the bad guys seem to be playing by an entirely different set of rules which allow them to stay one step ahead. Although you want the Sheriff to confront and defeat Chigurh, you never really feel like that's a realistic scenario. The meaning of the title is contained in the opening monolog as the Sheriff says, "The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure."

But there's much more to the movie than an old man coming to terms with his retirement. To me, the movie felt like it was more about the unpredictable, unfair, and arbitrary nature of our lives, a theme that is both played out repeatedly, and even explicitly discussed. For instance, while Llewelyn hides out at a hotel in El Paso, a girl by the pool notices that he keeps looking out his window. She later has the opportunity to flirt with him, and asks him what he's looking for. He tells her he's just watching for what's coming, at which point she casually responds that you never see what's coming.

In another scene, the Sheriff is talking with Llewelyn's wife in a diner, and tells her a story about a rancher who failed to kill a cow cleanly on his first attempt. He decides to put a bullet in the cows head to end it quickly, but since the cow is thrashing about, the rancher misses and the bullet glances the cows head, ricochets around the metal room, and lodges itself in the rancher's arm. The Sheriff solemnly tells Llewelyn's wife that even between man and cattle, nothing is certain.

Interestingly, during the same conversation, the Sheriff mentions that cattle are killed with a pneumatic rod now which is much more predictable. One of Chigurh favorite tools is a pneumatic cattle gun which he uses both for killing people, and for blowing locks. The Sheriff never makes the connection between his own story, and a recent murder caused by a deep head wound which was assumed to be from a gun until no bullet was found. It was as though the possibility of something so inhuman wouldn't even register with him.

The hit man Carson Wells is another device the movie uses to demonstrate unpredictability. Carson comes across as a hotshot who isn't the least bit intimidated by Chigurh, and manages to track down Llewelyn in a matter of hours. Just when it looks like the dynamic of the hunt is about to change, Chigurh happens to get the drop on Carson, and removes him from the story as suddenly as he was introduced. The audience is sure that Carson can't be killed so quickly, and that his impact on the story can't possibly be so minimal, yet he is instantly and unapologetically executed as Chigurh casually reaches for a ringing phone.

And then as if to demonstrate the point literally, there's Chigurh's technique of sometimes deciding whether to let someone live based solely on a coin toss. A gas station owner, who is unaware of the extent to which he is in danger, wins the toss after which Chigurh tells him keep the quarter. He tells the man who has narrowly escaped being brutally murdered to put his lucky quarter someplace special. Don't mix it in with the rest of the change in his pocket, Chigurh warns, even though in reality, it's just another quarter. From this scene comes one of the eeriest lines of the entire movie: "What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss."

Throughout the entire movie, Chigurh seems to be the only one who is in control. In fact, he comes across as the master of everyone's fate. He is eerily calm and in control whether he is strangling a deputy with handcuffs, stitching up his own gun wounds, or slaughtering people with his cattle gun or silenced twelve gauge. But in one final demonstration of the randomness of the universe, while driving down a completely calm and quiet suburban street, Chigurh is T-boned at an intersection and sustains serious injuries, including a compound fracture of his arm. He tries to gather the strength to flee the scene, but as the sirens rapidly close in, you get the distinct feeling that even the one man who seemed to control everything couldn't see what was coming.

Comments

[Alvin Kantor]

The acting of Javier Bardem is beyond anything I've seen recently. That last scene of the auto accident shook me up. The ending left me hanging..."what he just walked away from the accident? No arrest?

[shanto armonde]

the movie isn't really about unpredictability. it is about divine punishment from god because the sherrifs have been rendered impotent (hence the title). Chigurh kills anyone in his path of "justice", which is to bring down those who yield to avarice. that is why he allows perfectly innocent people to go (te store owner and the girl). but he is unable to make that choice and so he uses the coin. he is subconciously a hand of god if you will.

[Christian Cantrell]

Shanto,

That's an interesting interpretation, but I don't quite see it. First of all, although Chigurh does appear God-like throughout the movie, the car accident at the end made it clear that he is as mortal as anyone else (and just as susceptible to unpredictability).

Second of all, Chigurh kills plenty of people who are not consumed by avarice. The cop at the beginning, the man he pulls over using the dead cop's car, the chicken farmer. Whether or not he kills people has nothing to do with how greedy they may be. In fact, he doesn't even get a chance to kill Llewelyn, the character who probably exhibits the most greed. Llewelyn is killed rather suddenly and unexpectedly by a group of Mexicans looking for the money -- again, something completely unexpected from the perspective of the audience. Someone we never saw coming.

And lastly, Chigurh did not allow the girl to live -- at least, that's not what we are lead to believe. The last we see her, she is refusing to call the coin toss which aggravates Chigurh. The next time we see Chigurah, he is casually leaving her house, checking the bottoms of his shoes, presumably for blood stains.

The more I think about it, the more I'm certain that this movie is about the inability to see what's coming next. This theme is discussed explicitly in the movie, and played out over and over again, often at the expense of someone's life.

I should have noted in my initial review that this movie is the next Pulp Fiction. It's similar in its approach to violence, and in the way it challenges so many movie conventions.

Christian

[Steve]

Regarding Christian's statement that "this movie is about the inability to see what's coming next":

I'd agree in the sense that "what's coming next" is unpredictable, but would add that the film suggests that the outcome is not entirely random but instead is governed by Fate which, unfortunately for the characters, is unknowable. While we did not predict the manner of Llewelyn's death, it was certainly the eventual result of his poor aim at the opening of the film, despite his best efforts to control his doomed situation. When his wife refuses to call the coin toss, she may be the first character to realize that while her Fate is not hers to control, neither does it depend on the toss of a coin. Here Chigurh embodies Fate, and in the following scene he plays victim to it.

[Nathan]

I presume Llewelyn's wife was killed, which many think she lives. I wish I would have read the book first, but I could not wait.

Great film, I didn't quite understand the ending, but I felt I knew what he meant, obscurely. What did you think he meant in the ending with his dream and speech?

[Christian Cantrell]

Nathan,

I'm not entirely sure about the very end, either. I know it's a cliche, but my interpretation was that even though nobody can see what's coming next, one thing we do know is that we'll all end up in the same place. The Sheriff felt like his father was up ahead waiting for him. He didn't know how he was going to get to his father because he couldn't see through the weather (he couldn't see what was coming next), but he knew that eventually, he'd get there.

This dream very much relates to the comment Llewelyn made to his wife on his way out the door to bring the Mexican some water. He says if he doesn't come back, to tell mother he loves her. His wife says his mother is already dead. Lleweln responds, "Well then I'll tell her myself."

Again, the lesson here is that he has no idea what's in store for him (it's worth noting that his decision to return with the water is what eventually leads to his death), but one thing he knows for certain is that one day, he'll be with his mother again, just as the Sheriff knows he is on his way to a reunion with his dead father, one way or another.

[No Board for Confused Movie Buffs]

Thanks, I needed to read your comments to understand what I had just witnessed. This was a great movie, but I didn't know why. Now, it makes more sense.

[Jake]

alright you guys are trying really hard to squeeze a 'point' out of this movie and sound really stupid pointing out obvious things and coming up with no overall point or moral. the movie was alright and there was no beautiful point to be derived or interpreted it just ended. that is all...

[Christian Cantrell]

Jake,

It's always possible that you're right. However, I find it hard to believe that the unconventional nature of No Country was arbitrary. It would have been easy to make a movie that leads up to a big showdown between Lleweln and Chigurh, where Lleweln emerges victorious having eliminated his opponent after some pithy bad-ass comment and a shot to the head. In fact, the movie clearly makes you think that's what's going to happen after Lleweln's comment about making Chigurh his "special project". Everything about the movie points in this direction (his past in Vietnam, his wife's comment about how he never backs down, etc.), yet he ends up being killed offscreen by an anonymous character almost as an afterthought. That was not a random twist. That was an intentional device designed to make a point.

The ending of the movie was so unpredictable and unconventional that a couple of people in the theater actually booed. I believe that's because they thought they were watching a movie with, as you say, "no overall point or moral". They thought they were just watching an action/adventure/crime movie where the good guys win and make off with the money. The reality, however, is that to understand and appreciate No Country, you have look way beyond what you call the "obvious things".

Of course, it's always possible I'm reading way too much into the movie, and that the ending was just supposed to be a surprise. There's probably no right answer. But it's fun to debate. :)

Christian

[Steve]

@Christian: Nah - Cormac McCarthy is a genuine writer, and recently won a Pullitzer Prize. Especially in light of how every other part of the movie was saturated with symbolism, I doubt the ending was arbitrary...

[Christian Cantrell]

Steve,

Totally agree. I gotta read the book now. I've been haunted by the movie.

Christian

[ben]

My take on the ending is that the only way to be truly happy is to resign yourself to your fate. It isnt until the sherrif decides to give up the pursuit of Chigurh and remove himself from his goal of stopping fate (Chigurh) that he begins to find solice. Solice doesn't come immediately but is instead hinted at by his dream at the end. The dream was very introspective and carried a lot of personal meaning from the sherrif. It signals the beginning of what we can assume to be a long process of self-reflection during his retirement. Retirement is a time to literally remove yourself from the game (fate) in order to find inner peace before death. Great discussion guys!

[Ben]

Just an addendum to my last post an hour or so ago.

- the sherrif resigning himself to fate and beginning to find peace is contrasted with the guys wife who's decision to fight fate and refuse to call the flip of the coin and finds her own destruction.

THANKS!

[Bboy]

Ben-it appeared to me at the end that Tom (Tommy Lee Jones) was very unsettled...my take on it is because he had no control over his fate...this didn't seem to be a world he understood anymore..and even if Lewelyn's wife gave into 'fate' at the end and called the coing...there still was a %50 chance it would have led to her destruction....don't know....

Jake-you're either 12 years old...or you're a moron, flip a coin. How can you possibly think that this movie has no meaning whatsoever...do your research on the writer of the book, and the makers of the movie before coming to brash conclusions and insulting people far more mature than you.

I'm sorry Christian but you have far more patience for ignorance than I do.

[Craig]

Beyond the idea of fate and unpredictability (I do think the movie talks also about fate, not just unpredictability) I think the movie is a more simple tale of good and evil. The three main characters represent different time periods / generations. Sheriff Bell is from a time and belief when you did the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. Llewelyn Moss is your typical man, making both good and sinful decisions, falling fate to his temptation. Chigurh is representative of the coming evil, the new generation of people that the Sheriff describes in his opening monologue. (Not people given to crimes of passion, but people who simply seem to have no moral convictions. Who know they are going to hell for the things they do, but could care less. The Sheriff describes that he doesn't understand this generation, and therefore feels incompentent to meet such a mindset).

The title "no country for old men" is in reference to this thought. Sheriff Bell's generation (older generation) are not prepared to meet this kind of evil. They are living in a time, that they are no suited to live in. It is no place for them.

Note: Cormac McCarthy's other works often have a very dark tone. This book / movie and his other works are reflections of his views. The world is falling to becoming more and more depraved and evil, and there is NO stopping it. It is only a matter of time. (Read "The Road", another book with this theme)

That is why toward the end, the sheriff begins talking about "the dismal tide," (A phrase found in several of McCarthy's books about the coming evil) and about how there is no stopping it.

The ending of the movie also reflects this point of view. The sheriff never does catch up with Chigurh. Moss dies the same way he got into the mess (falling to temptation.) Chigurh survives the car crash to highlight two facts - one being that he is like a ghost. Coming and going without anyone seeing. The other being that he is unstoppable. Not even the unpredictable fatal car crash is able to stop him.

The dream I believe talks about his father who was a sheriff, carrying a horn and a fire "the way people used to do" in past generations. He is carrying this as far out as possible, before he sets the fire up, and tells his son that he will know he's found him when he reaches the fire. This dream is symbolic I think for how the father (being a sheriff) pushed back the dismal tide. He knew that there is no way to put the fire out, only to "push it back" and delay "the dismal tide." The movie ends on the line: "And then I woke up", because Sheriff Bell realizes that he has reached that fire. He is already living in the hell that his father had tried to push back.

[Nancy]

Can someone please tell me what the last few lines of the movie were? I was distracted and all of a sudden the movie went to black. Something about a dream?

At any rate I loved the movie and would put it in my top ten for the year.

Thanks.

[davidvanb]

I have a theory that the entire movie was really one of Sherrif Ed Tom's dreams. He was just so breezy throughout the picture, so casual. He always had a very good idea of what was going on, yet he was a step behind the action. Ed Tom was a lucid dreamer as evidenced by the conversation with his wife at the end and this movie was his BIG pre-retirement anxiety dream. Chigurh as the Grim Reaper who uses absurd weapons and whose random violent acts & conversations just don't make a lot of sense yet somehow remain "linear" much in the same way Ed Tom tells stories. The fact that Ed Tom didn't or couldn't die in the crime scene hotel room. How his conversations seemed to be mimicking the movie's action (the cattle gun conversation with Llewelyn's wife, the Mexican killers conversation with his buddy in the messy trailer, telling his wife about his dreams and saying "And then I woke up" just as the movie abruptly ends.)

Just one man's theory. Feel free to shoot holes in it ;)

In the end, I thought "No Country for Old Men" was beautifully filmed and wonderfully acted, but I really didn't like it. It made me think a little, but not a lot. Like Ed Tom, I must be getting old.

[Harry MacD]

Chigurh refers to himself as having been brought to the store by the same forces as brought the quarter. Whether the storekeeper lives or dies Chigurh leaves to the fate of a coin toss, and he administers either fate with equal detachment - he seems to regard himself as the instrument of fate. Only Carla Jean rejects his false construct and places responsibility for his acts where it belongs.

Yet for the randomness of the death Chigurh deals and of his own car accident, he also acts according to a code. He kills almost every single person he encounters. The ones who live are the storekeeper who called heads, the trailer park lady who would not give out Llewellyn's employment information, and the Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Some are killed out of pure fate, but others are killed in the administration of Chigurh's justice. He kills the drug dealers - they are bad. He kills Carson because he is a bounty hunter - he is bad. He kills Carla Jean (I think) to keep his word to do so when Llewellyn forsook her out of manly pride.

Why did he not kill the trailer park lady or the Sheriff? Trailer park lady stood on principle and refused to give out the employment information. She puffed up at him in refusing on principle, and he smiled at her slightly when she did. Why did he not kill the Sheriff when they were in the motel room together? For that matter, why didn't the Sheriff start shooting when he realized he must be there? I don't know. The Sheriff is the only significant character in the story he encounters who is not afflicted by a moral compromise of some kind.

The fate of the accountant and the chicken truck driver are unknown, but in this story there must be loose ends.

The conversation with the retired, crippled former deputy should not be overlooked. The Sheriff wants to quit because he feels overmatched by the rising dismal tide of evil. The crippled deputy replies that "it ain't nothing new" and talks of the incredible adversity and evil faced by the lawmen of the olden days. The sheriff who was implacably killed in the crippled deputy's story was still struggling to get to his gun even after he was shot - he fought to the very last.

My takeaway is that the movie is saying that good and evil and random fate are all immutable and that the struggle of good against evil must never be abandoned because evil never rests and never goes away. We can't see the way clearly, and it's cold and hard, but our Father is up ahead building us a fire that will warm us if we can make it through.

[Ryan]

Hey guys I just saw the movie, duh. lol. And I'm left hanging ever so slightly. In the end he's talking about a dream, right? 2 dreams. Well there were 2 blackouts in the movie. Right before the L guy dies and then later by the father. The movie itself seemed clustered as if to be a dream and also you couldn't really predict anything. Yet 'you can't stop what is coming' via the coins traveling to their 'destinations' when the killer brings that up to people. And is it possible that the man in the wheel chair was his father? Given he looked old the sheriff may have even been older. That could have been the second dream. Then you look at it. Okay. The dream makes sense for the cluster f'k of a movie then you go back and look at the themes and it makes it a fantastic movie. Eh, just a thought. Plz resond. :].

[Joyce]

What happened in the hotel room near the end? The sherriff goes back in, sees the lock has been blown out by the air gun, walks in, sits on the bed then leaves. You see the psycho standing somewhere with a gun - why isn't the sherriff killed like all the others? What is supposed to be happening in that scene? (FYI I'm blonde)

[Steve]

It seems that all the main characters are trying to play God but are succeptive to death either because of there choice in sin or fate itself.Its a mixture of both. There was a beginning before the story began. Even before the drugs were smuggled in. Its a long vicious cycle. But all cattle(humans)are killed or harmed in the path of others evilness. The wife is affected cause of her husbands greed. Assuming she dies. The Sheriff still not finding God and realizing things are changing these days. The bad guy isn't in control because of the unexpected car accident. I don't know. Just thoughts. But I do agree we really don't know what is coming. Both good and bad all die in the end. Kind of like a punishment from God. Coming to think of it. Twice in the movie 2 kids give their shirt to the wounded guys but are given money first. Both occasions they argue about getting more. Nothing comes good out of greed. Damn, lots of different meanings. Great movie. Apart of me though wishes that it was made a little more Hollywood. But I like the reality in it better. Not sure if I made sense.

[John]

What was the meaning of the sheriffs dream in the last scene of the movie?

[eric]

bboy- agreed on the "simple tale of good and evil" part- but think even simpler. mccarthy's books tend to be about a universally ambiguous division between good/evil, and free will. put more concisely, they are anti-karma.

the characters in no country for old men are involved in a world where fate is either completely determined or completely absent. no matter how evil they are (chigurh), or how distanced from the events driving the story (bell), or how ostensibly innocent (moss's wife), there is no divine payoff/payback- no country for old men.

[art Schaub]

These comments have helped me understand this movie on a whole different level. Thank you all for the insights. The movie followed the novel well. I've read most Cormac McCarthy novels and I am often left with a strange feeling after these readings. His writing has a level of genius that often leaves me in a place where I know I've just read something profound and great yet I'm not sure why. The themes are often obscure and layered and open to multiple interpretations.

[Christian Cantrell]

Art,

Glad you found these comments useful. I found myself very much haunted by the movie which is what prompted me to write such a lengthy and analytical review. The ensuing discussion has really helped me to see the film in a new light, as well.

Christian