Is "No Country For Old Men" worthy of its awards? | Review and Analysis
Updated: May 24, 2022
Crime/Western - 2007
Spoilers Beware!
The film, No Country for Old Men, was a beautifully crafted movie that seemingly appears to be a straightforward crime story, but actually contains a much deeper meaning that plays into the title of the multiple Academy award winning picture. The film is not for the faint of heart due to its dark, ruthlessly violent nature that places a deadly sociopath hitman at its center. Nonetheless, with its star-studded cast, the movie does an excellent job at keeping viewers engaged as they watch the graphic events unfold, ultimately making an allegorical play on the idea of fate, while also containing surprising twists.
Set in Texas, viewers are immediately introduced into the film by a speech made by one of the main characters, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones), that explains his fear of the future seeing how rapidly it’s changing. Bell is worried he will not be able to keep up with the drastic and violent progression of society that is occurring due to the rapid influx of cartels entering into Texas borders, reaping havoc among all in their wake. He doesn’t understand the violence, nor can make sense of it, but hopes to find a part in the newly developing world in which he can finally understand and make a positive difference against the negative changes arising.
As the story continues, we meet another central character, Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem), who is taken into custody by police officers due to his murderous crimes, but ends up brutally strangling the officer once at the police station. Chigurh makes his grand escape, setting off his brutal stream of crimes that occur upon those that come across him. Finally, viewers are introduced to our main character, Llewelyn Moss (played by Josh Brolin), who, while hunting deer, happens upon a drug deal gone wrong in which most are dead. He then finds a brief case filled with $2 million dollars, starting the adventure that places him in great danger against multiple groups, including the hired hitman Chigurh who wants to take the money and see Moss dead.
Now, the juxtaposition between the three characters – Ed Tom Bell, Anton Chigurh, and Llewelyn Moss – creates an interesting theme more than the typical “the good, the bad, and the ugly”. In fact, throughout the movie, viewers witness as Chigurh utilizes a coin toss to make the decision of whether one lives or dies. This is shown with the clerk at the gas station after Chigurh flips the coin, telling the gas attendant to guess whether the coin landed on “heads” or “tails”. Chigurh continues this approach as the story progresses, believing himself to be a sort of “master of fate” that gets to flip the coin that decides the destiny of those who “call it”.
He questions, even somewhat mocks, the character Carson Wells (played by Woody Harrelson) who is presumably in a similar profession as Chigurh, but chooses to follow “rules” that prevents him from taking a more wild and violent approach (like Chigurh) towards how he handles those he comes across. Chigurh had seemingly believed fate and his lack of following the “rules” had led him to this moment, thus, leading him to kill Wells with a gun typically used to kill cattle seeing as he deemed humans no more than animals to be hunted.
On the other hand, Moss gets caught up in his battle with “fate”, as foreshadowed in the beginning of the film. A regular civilian, Moss had happened upon the brutal cartel crime while hunting, yet stupidly grabbed the $2 million dollars that led to his ultimate demise. He was tempting the game of fate by believing he could escape with the mass amount of money wanted by many, leading destiny to catch up to him in a very shocking way once he was found murdered in a motel room. It was unexpected, but provided the plot twist that not only surprising, but added to the overall theme the filmmaker was attempting. Moreover, in the beginning of the film while Moss was hunting, he had come across a dog that was seemingly misplaced in a random paster filled with deer. This, thus, symbolized not only the idea of Moss later becoming the one that is, instead, being hunted, but also an outlier in a field he had no business being in anyways, as Wells points out to Moss later in the film.
Furthermore, while Chigurh believed himself to be the master of fate and Moss attempted, yet failed, to play with fate, Bell from the very beginning had struggled in a continued effort to make sense of it. The sheriff had followed the mayhem that ensued between both Moss and Chigurh, hoping to prevent Moss’s death and aid in capturing the runaway sociopath. However, he always ends up disappointed and saddened by each violent crime scene he happened upon, leading him at the end of the movie to confide to a retired cop that he is ready to retire – that there is, as the title of the film states, “no country for old men”. It’s a major reference back to the beginning of the movie when Bell had mentioned wanting to find his place in the world, to the now end after all the violence had led him to no longer wanting to continue making sense of something he’d never understand. The world, in his eyes, had simply grown past him - and to retire from his sheriff duties was his next and final step to appease the earth no longer suited for him.
As a final point to touch on, this film was not big on giving viewers much exposition to describe what was going on. As previously mentioned, this movie seemingly appears to be a straightforward crime film because there is not much explanation for viewers. In fact, we rarely even see the three leading men on screen together but rather watch them individually as their stories, like fate, intertwine. There are scenes, such as a pool scene with a woman and Moss, that appear to be randomly placed with not much purpose, but, when looking deeper, is actually another play on fate. When Moss tells the woman he’s waiting on his wife and also “looking for what’s coming”, she says, “Yeah, but no one ever sees that.” Then in the next scene, we find out Moss had shockingly been killed by not the one he was looking for (Chigurh), but a cartel group who had also been looking for him.
Moreover, even despite Moss’s death, Chigurh still believed he had to meet up with Moss’s wife to decide her “fate” with the coin toss, to which he asks her to “call it”. She refuses, finally calling out that the coin doesn’t have any say – it’s just him and his falsified view of himself as the controller of one’s fate. After he kills her, the next scene shows him driving through a green light, before being randomly struck and severely injured by someone running a red light. This scene was utilized to show he is no master of fate, as he is subject to its merciless hands just like everyone else. This movie was absolutely brilliant and definitely worth the watch for those willing to give it a chance despite its graphic content!
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