My Life at the Movies 5.26.09: 2007 - No Country for Old Men

Posted by DC Perry on 05.26.2009

I couldn't swear to every detail, but it's certainly true that it is a story.

In 2007, Upton Sinclair's classic novel Oil! was very nearly adapted into a movie. There Will Be Blood combined verbatim passages of Sinclair's novel with material never hinted at in the novel to create an amazing film that spawned one of the strangest Internet memes in recent memory. Juno opened to an abundance of hype, mostly due to Diablo Cody's snappy, Gilmore Girls-on-acid dialog, but when you wipe that off, you still have a charming movie about believable and identifiable characters. Ratatouille continued Pixar's string of movies that sound awful when you first hear about them that turn out to be endearing and poignant without being cloying. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters was compelling in the way the best documentaries are – by forcing you to take a rooting interest in something you'd never heard of before in your life. And Hot Fuzz was just fucking hilarious.

But, as fate would have it, none of those won the coin toss for best movie of the year.



2007 at a Glance

US President: George W. Bush
Median annual salary: $53,000
Gallon of gas: $2.76
Dozen eggs: $1.59
New house: $250,100
New car: $29,575
Movie ticket: $8.50
Boston Red Sox: 96-66, first place, American League East. Oh, and this.
Me: Taking in a hobo.

Life is getting to be too much for Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). He's a lawman just like his grandfather and his father before him, but lately, things are just getting way too violent, and he feels like he can't keep up. Murders, drug deals, shootouts – it's enough to make a man want to retire.


Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes".

If Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) were a better shot, he never would have got into this mess. But his poor aim seems to be his good fortune when he stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad in the middle of the Texas back country. Amidst the dead men, dogs, and Jeeps, he finds one dying Mexican begging for water, a truck full of heroin, and a satchel full of cash. He takes the satchel and some weapons and heads home, leaving the rest behind.


I'm fixin' to do something dumber than hell, but I'm going anyways.

If Llewelyn Moss weren't such a softie, he never would have got into this mess. But he wakes up in the middle of the night and fills a jug with water for the dying Mexican. He finds someone has already brought him a bullet in the head, and glancing up at his truck on the ridge, he sees they're still hanging around. They chase him down, firing on him from their Jeep as he runs for the river, and a long swim and a short dog fight later, Moss heads home to plan his escape. He sends his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) to Odessa to stay with her mother (the ubiquitous Beth Grant) while he takes the money and runs.


I guess I would say he doesn't have a sense of humor.

Running, it turns out, is exactly the right plan. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is taken into police custody on the side of the highway with nothing but a captive bolt pistol, which the arresting officer mistakes for an oxygen canister. Chigurh strangles the officer with his handcuffs, frees himself, pulls over a driver, and murders him with a bolt to the forehead. Chigurh is hired to retrieve the money Moss recovered from the botched drug deal, and he is not the sort to give up easily. There is a transponder hidden in the satchel, and Chigurh uses it to track Moss to a hotel in Del Rio. Moss, realizing he's been tracked by another group of men, rents a room that shares a vent with his so he can extract it without being ambushed. Chigurh murders the men in Moss's room with his weapons of choice – his bolt gun and a silenced shotgun – but discovers the satchel is gone. He follows the transponder signal to a bordertown hotel, where the two have a bloody shootout in the streets.


You think this boy Moss has got any notion of the sorts of sons of bitches that're huntin' him?

Both men are badly injured. Chigurh holes up and tends to his wounded leg, while Moss crosses the border and is admitted to a Mexican hospital. There, Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), another man hired to recover the satchel, offers Moss protection in exchange for the money. He leaves Moss, telling him to call if he wants to take him up on his offer, and implying that Chigurh may go after his wife if he can't find him. Moss calls Wells, but it's too late; Chigurh blasts him with his shotgun and answers the phone himself, offering Moss a new deal – give Chigurh the money, and Chigurh will not murder his wife. Of course, Moss cannot save himself; Chigurh intends to kill him no matter what.


Do you have any idea how goddamn crazy you are?

Moss underestimates Chigurh, and arranges to meet Carla Jean at a hotel in El Paso to give her the money and send her somewhere safe. Sheriff Bell, slowly piecing events together back home, calls Carla Jean in Odessa and offers to help keep Moss safe if she'll tell him where he is. She agrees, and they meet in El Paso, but by the time they arrives, Moss is dead in a pool of his own blood.


He's seen the same things I've seen, and it's certainly made an impression on me.

Chigurh, having murdered his employer for sending too many men after the money, finds Carla Jean at her mother's home. He tells her he promised her husband that he would kill her, giving the deal he offered Moss that special sociopath twist that probably makes sense to him. Just as he did earlier to a convenience store clerk who was foolish enough to ask him about the weather, Chigurh offers to let Carla Jean call a coin toss. Carla Jean, unlike the clerk, refuses to give him the out – random chance won't decide her fate. Chigurh must choose to do it himself. Also unlike the clerk, Carla Jean does not survive the encounter.


The coin don't have no say. It's just you.

After checking his boots for blood, Chigurh gets sideswiped Gerry Bertier style, but he's tough – he's a hockey player. He pays a local kid $100 for his shirt, which he fashions into a sling, and for his silence when the police get there. And with that, Chigurh limps off, free to be evil another day.


A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."

Sheriff Bell, meanwhile, is having a crisis of faith. He visits his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin), who questions his decision to retire. Bell says he feels overwhelmed and overmatched by the increasingly violent world he's expected to police. Uncle Ellis calls bullshit, reminding Bell that violence is nothing new, and calls him vain for imagining his time is anything special. Nevertheless, Bell retires, and one morning before going out for a ride, he tells his wife Loretta (Tess Harper) about two dreams he had the previous night. One was about his father giving him some money in town, but he thinks he lost it. The other was set a long time ago, and he and his father were riding in the snow through the mountains. His father carried fire with him and went on ahead to make a fire. He may also have dreamed of lions.

Joel and Ethan Coen have dealt with similar themes before, most notably in Fargo, but never with the force and simple beauty on display in No Country for Old Men. Chigurh is a terrifying sociopath who has none of the bumbling criminal in him, yet he exudes an occasional charm that makes his violence that much more unsettling. Moss is a simpler man, pulled by circumstances into a world way out of his depth. But for all their differences, their philosophies are remarkably similar. Chigurh and Moss both choose to see a world governed by fate, beyond their direct control, despite both acting directly to affect that world. Chigurh lets coin tosses govern his murderous impulses; Moss recognizes the foolishness of his impulses, yet acts on them anyway. Only Bell recognizes his agency over fate, but he is overwhelmed by the chaos around him, and in the end, he chooses to remove himself. Even he allows circumstances to push him out of the life that gives him meaning.



In the end, you can't stop what's comin'.