No Country for Old Men is a critically acclaimed 2007 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, the film features Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, and Javier Bardem. Faithfully adapted from the well-received novel, No Country for Old Men draws heavily on McCarthy’s themes of chance and fate. It tells the story of a drug deal gone very wrong and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama as three men crisscross each other’s paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas.
Highly praised by critics, the film received several Golden Globe Award nominations. A Guardian journalist said the film proved "that the Coens’ technical abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based western classicism reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, are matched by few living directors."
The film opens with shots of desolate, wide-open country in West Texas in June 1980. In a voiceover, the local sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), tells of the changing times as the region becomes increasingly violent. The key character of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) and his weapon of choice — cattle gun — are introduced as he escapes police custody and steals a car by using the cattle gun to kill the car’s driver. Meanwhile, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, comes across a collection of corpses and one dying Mexican, the aftermath of a drug deal gone sour. He also finds two million dollars in a suitcase. Initially taking the money and leaving the Mexican to die, Moss has an attack of conscience late that night and returns with water for the dying man. This good deed sets off a cat-and-mouse game in which the hunter and hunted frequently switch roles, as a gang of Mexicans, Moss, Chigurh, and Bell chase each other and the money across the Texas and Mexico landscapes.
Chigurh, a professional hitman, has been hired to retrieve the case of money, which has a transponder hidden in it, facilitating his assignment. Chigurh doesn’t hesitate to kill those standing in his way, including those closely associated with the drug deal (such as two mid-level lieutenants working for his employer), the drivers of cars he steals for transportation as he chases the money, and people he encounters by chance. Moss, unaware of the transponder’s existence, sends his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) out of town and jumps from motel to motel as he attempts to elude both the Mexicans and Chigurh. Bell, meanwhile avoids the federal authorities’ investigation of the murder and drug deal scene, and focuses his attention on trying to locate and protect Moss. Of these, only the heavily armed Mexicans actually come in physical contact with the others; New York Times critic A.O. Scott points out that Chigurh, Moss and Bell "occupy the screen one at a time, almost never appearing in the frame together, even as their fates become ever more intimately entwined".
Chigurh, with his tracking device, inexorably closes in on Moss, while acting as an agent of fate and chance to the people he meets: Variety critic Todd McCarthy describes his modus operandum thus:
"Death walks hand in hand with Chigurh wherever he goes, unless he decides otherwise ... if everything you’ve done in your life has led you to him, he may explain to his about-to-be victims, your time might just have come. "You don’t have to do this," the innocent invariably insist to a man whose murderous code dictates otherwise. Occasionally, however, he will allow someone to decide his own fate by coin toss, notably in a tense early scene in an old filling station marbled with nervous humor."
Chigurgh kills some of the Mexicans and a rival hitman, Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), hired by the businessman behind the drug transaction (Stephen Root) to clean up its messy consequences. Moss, realizing Chigurh will find Carla Jean and kill her, arranges a rendezvous with her in El Paso to give her the money and send her out of harm’s way. Bell’s, Moss’s, Chigurh’s, the Mexicans’ and Carla Jean’s paths all converge on a seedy hotel in El Paso, but not all simultaneously. The others arrive after Moss has been killed by the Mexicans in a bloody shootout at the motel.
Sheriff Bell returns that night to the now-quiet motel and finds the locks have been blown out on two adjacent hotel room doors (blown locks being Chigurh’s recurring method of invasion). Chigurh is shown hiding behind the door of the hotel room, but when Bell enters the other room, Chigurh is not visible on the screen and the Sheriff does not observe him. It is unclear from the movie whether Chigurh is actually in the room when Bell enters. Bell sees that the vent cover has been removed, indicating the money is gone, and leaves unmolested.
Some time later, Bell visits his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin), an ex-lawman. Bell is planning to retire due to his weariness of the changing times, but Ellis points out that the region has always been violent, and Ellis accuses Bell of "vanity" — thinking times are somehow different now. Still later, Chigurh confronts the widowed Carla Jean returning home from her the funeral of her mother who has recently died--presumably of cancer. Telling her he must follow through on his promise to Moss to kill her if he didn’t give up the money, he reconsiders and offers her the same "coin flip" opportunity he offered the gas station owner; Carla Jean refuses to call heads or tails, and we next see Chigurh leaving the house. Upon leaving the house, Chigurh examines the soles of his boots, as if to see if there is any trace of blood, indicating he may have killed Carla Jean. As Chigurh leaves another murder scene he is injured in a chance car accident, but manages to escape the scene before the police arrive.
The film closes on Bell, in uneasy retirement at home, reflecting on his life choices. Sheriff Bell relates to his wife (Tess Harper) two dreams he had, both involving his father, a lawman who died decades earlier while fighting crime. In the second dream, the two are riding horses in the snow, and his father, carrying fire in a horn, passes him by without looking at him, riding on ahead into the darkness to prepare a camp for both. |
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