I watched this movie for the first time last night - great movie! I read the thread from a couple of months back and that helped a lot in understanding what was going on. Still a couple of nitpick questions.
What date is this movie set in? I’m guessing about 1978 by the clothes and cars. I didn’t pick up on this at first but it struck me as strange when the characters were buying guns without permits or waiting periods, that the Vietnam vets were young men, and that scene were the phone rang about 5 times before the killer answered it. These days a machine would probably pick it up so you would answer it sooner. Why was this movie set in an earlier period?
What was the killer’s connection to the drug money? How did he know about it? Who were the “managerial types” that were killed, FBI or officials or just some sort of shady detectives? They seemed to know the killer, so it seems unprofessional that the killer would have killed them if they had some sort of business arrangement.
The killer seemed to do the same thing for a job and a hobby. However if he killed all of his business associates, wouldn’t they stop giving him work?
Who was the character that hired Woody Harrelson. There was a drug deal that went wrong and there were Mexicans on both sides of the deal and Mexicans were also looking for the money. So who was bringing all these white guys into the search?
Is there such a thing as a muffler for a shotgun? It seems it would really interfere with the spread of the pellets as they left the muzzle.
The date is 1980, from the fact that the coin had traveled twenty-some odd years from the fifties… I did the math at the theater and it was 1980.
Anton Chigurh was an assassin hired to retrieve the money, which is why he had the transponder. I assume the “managerial types” were also hired by the same entity who hired Chigurh.
The man who hired Woody Harrelson was involved in the cocaine exchange somehow, and wanted the money.
It’s plausible that a shotgun can be silenced, but not very practical. Not that it’d interfere with the spread so much, but just that it’s just not feasible when silencers are available for handguns.
Also, the tombstone on the mother-in-law from hell’s grave said 1922-1980, so that would also be a pretty big clue as to the year the movie took place.
Thanks for the good response and to the others who replied.
I was thinking that the Woody Harrelson character should have charged Chigurh on the stairs when they first meet in the movie. He would have had the momentum of being several stairs higher than Chirgurh and could have fell on top of him and probably hurt him. Chirgurh probably would have not been able to raise and fire the awkward shotgun in the time he was being charged, and he would have to concentrate on trying to protect himself from the fall. Woody knew from past experience that he would be a dead man once Chrighurh got him in a room with a shotgun pointed at him and he knew he couldn’t negotiate with Chrigurh. He explained this much to the Bronson character. So he should have taken his best opportunity.
My interpretation is a couple of days at most. Carla Jean states that she just came back from burying her mother when she is confronted by Anton. I assume her mother was killed by the Mexicans right after they had made contact with the mother. Another interpretation could be that the mother died of her cancer, then who knows how much time passed.
Great movie. One of the best of the year. But there was one thing I had a problem with. Chigurh’s compressed-air pig killer would work great on pigs and traveling salesmen but wouldn’t work at all on door locks, especially deadbolts. A deadbolt is, essentially, a T-shape. The cylinder is the cross-bar and the bolt is the vertical part. The bolt is what holds the door in the jambs. Blow the cylinder out and the bolt is still in place with no way to retract it. The same goes, but to a lesser extent, with a keyed lockset.
The title is somewhat explained in the final sequences. The one where Tommy Lee Jones is talking with Barry Corbin and then the final one where Jones is discussing his dream with his wife played by Tess Harper.
I wasn’t sure either way, given the conversation between Llewelyn and Wells in the hospital about how easy it was to track Llewelyn down in Mexico, I didn’t think it would take Chigurh long to find her. Embarrassingly, I wasn’t too sure who was on the slab in the morgue at first, which confused me some more :o
One other thing (and having enjoyed the film I’m again embarrassed to say I didn’t pick up on this) Chigurh was hired to get the money back. I assumed he was getting it back for the suit in the large building, as he used the transponder that the accountant said the suit had insisted on using. So why did Chigurh kill him? And why did he kill the two suits at the murder scene in the desert? Was it annoyance at being given a gadget to track down the money when he knew he could get it back himself.
I need to see it again, but did Chigurh kill the suit in the office because he sent Woody H. after him? Also he mentioned to the accountant that the suit gave the Mexicans a transponder too and the accountant said that it was because two teams would have a better chance of retrieving the money.
I assumed he killed the middle manager types who gave him the tracker because he was told to. I assumed they were being held responsible by the powers that be for the screw up with the money in the first place.
By the time he kills the suit named Root, Chigurh has pretty much gone off the reservation and pursuing his own twisted agenda.
It’s some time later when Chigurh turns up at Carla Jean’s. In the book it says that the funeral was on “a cold and windy day in March.” She thinks Chigurh is there for the money and says, “I haven’t got it. What little I got is long gone and there’s still bills aplenty to pay.”
The drug load is heroin not Coke.
The guy in the office was killed for sending Carson Wells after Chigurh. From the book I gather the money was his originally.
Pretty much because, at that point, they started to realize that Chigurh was a loose cannon that would kill anybody in his way. Not a great way to do business and has a tendency to call attention to their enterprises. In their opinion, the best way to handle the situation was to hire someone who knew Chigurh’s style and who can take him out quietly.
Mind you there is no evidence in either the book or the movie that the guy who employed Carson Wells also employed Chigurh. In fact in the book he gives the money to someone else that the reader knows sweet FA about.