That was what I told myself, too, but it was still more trouble than it should have been. Put in a mail slot, or just have the friggin’ mail on the coffee table or something.
My daughter was home from college for Thanksgiving break and saw the movie on Friday night. Yesterday she took me to see it – she absolutely had to see it again. And we both loved it. Glad she took me!
I have sort of a weird question. In the trailer on TV, did anyone else think at first that Chigurh was played by Tommy Lee Jones?? There is a quick scene of Chigurh walking into the pharmacy as the car blows up, and I swear his eyes look just like TLJ.
I’m a bit late on this, but I saw the movie for the first time today. Interestingly I’m someone who read the book, and actually didn’t realize that the Coen brothers were making it into a movie until after the movie had actually been released already.
I’ll go against the grain and say I actually did not enjoy the movie. There’s a ton of stuff that I really respect in the movie, the cinematography was great, the characters were solid, the acting was extremely well-done. Everything you have to do to make a movie good (from a functional standpoint), was done. But it just didn’t entertain.
I tried to enjoy it, I really did. Mainly because there was so much to really respect and like about what the movie was, but ultimately I couldn’t “force” myself to be entertained. The entertainment just never came.
I think for me it’s the type of thing that is perfect when you’re reading it in book form, as a movie it just didn’t work very well. I think somethings just don’t translate well to movie-form, even if done by masters (which the Coen brothers are.)
There’s tons of examples of great film making, but I just wasn’t entertained. When one scene flashes to Llewellyn being surprisingly dead, I got the impression this was supposed to “throw” the audience, and be majorly-ironic. Maybe reading the book ruined that for me, but something about it just felt contrived. Like the movie was trying to be ironic and “convention-breaking” just for the sake of it, I think that may have been part of what turned me off.
The other than was, the monologues/soliloquies from Tommy Lee Jones–I knew exactly the message that was trying to be sent from the moment the movie started, but the actual things he was saying were vapid and uninteresting to me. I think it’s the kind of conversation I just don’t like being subjected to in movie form but it’s fine in a book.
I know I’m in the minority on this (not only in this thread but in general, this movie has gotten great reviews), but while I think it’s a great movie, it’s a great movie that I just didn’t have fun watching. And that sort of hits at the heart of why I go to see movies in the first place.
Naw, it was fairly obvious that was coming. It was more to establish that Tommy Lee Jones was the protagonist, as Llewellyn’s death wasn’t featured on screen and it sort of just happened. Doesn’t matter how he died, someone else died and now Tommy has to deal with it. We never really were supposed to sympathize with him anyway, although it was kind of hard not to with all the screen time he received.
I didn’t get the impression that Moss knew Chigur was in the motel room. Did it come across that way in the book?
Sorry for the hijack, but:
…how did Babel end with no resolution?
Richard and Susan work out of some (not all, but some) of the issues in their relationship during the ordeal, get rescued and head back to the States, older and maybe a little wiser. Their kids are rescued from the desert and the family is reunited. Chieko and Yasujiro, in the final shot at the end, are making baby steps in coming to terms with Chieko’s mother’s suicide and her loneliness.
I mean, yeah, it’s not a happy ending–Amelia is deported back to Mexico with no job because of Santiago’s stupidity and the younger Moroccan boy is going to have to deal with his brother’s death and shooting a policeman–but there’s resolution there.
Regarding No Country For Old Men:
Chigurh comes off as all the more creepy for me because I read a few interviews with Bardem before seeing the movie, and he comes off as a really friendly, down-to-earth guy. If he doesn’t win the Best Supporting Oscar for this, there is no justice.
It’s the same way the book ends, as somebody has probably said - the book and the movie are almost identical. (I’ve never read McCarthy before, other than this one, but I think it’s incredible that he wrote a book that fit the Coens so perfectly.) The book does handle the question of what happened to the money and the movie skips it, but honestly, who cares what happens to the money? Knowing what happened to it doesn’t make any difference in the story.
Anyway, I loved the movie. The performances were great, the scenery was beautiful, and they did a wonderful job of moving the story to the screen. The only major addition was the scene where Bell goes into the hotel room looking for Chigurh, which was a perfect translation of one of the inner monologues late in the story. And Bardem just amazed me. That was the most terrifying and evil performance I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.
The ending hadn’t been sitting right with me since I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival but Cervaise’s discussion of it in post 30 is certainly the most satisfying explanation of it.
It all fits in my head so much better now. 
Yeah, the book and movie are very similar, which makes it strange that I enjoyed my read of the book but was actually bored by the movie (I almost fell asleep at one point.)
I agree that the acting was great, however I think that Llewellyn and Chirgurh were both extremely bland, uninteresting characters. To be honest, even in the book they are extremely one dimensional and not terribly interesting. I don’t really fear or hate Chigurh in either format because he’s so one-dimensional and unrealistic. I don’t like or sympathize much with Llewellyn because he’s likewise a very one-dimensional character (pure stubbornness, basically.)
It’s actually pretty amazing that Bardem and Brolin could make what are basically two cookie-cutter characters into good performances.
I agree with what someone above said about the use of sound; this movie is the only one I can remember in which I’ve noticed the use of ambient sound. The best of example of this has to be when Moss is sitting on the bed in his hotel room, right after he’s discovered the transponder, and Anton is coming down the hall outside his room. Moss calls the front desk, and you hear the rotary phone dialing, and then you can faintly hear the phone ringing downstairs. Then Anton comes and stands at the door, and you can see his shadow; then he walks away, and you hear him unscrew a light bulb, and it gets dark in the hallway.
I also liked the fact that, during the entire chase out the window and down the street, you never see Anton clearly, even though he’s one of only two characters involved in the battle.
As for the ending, I’m in the “disappointed” camp. I thought the last third of the movie was a letdown. But, the first two-thirds were worth the price of admission. I’ll definitely watch the movie again on DVD.
I just saw this movie last night and I did enjoy it. I don’t generally see movies in the theatre because of the cost, but it was an enjoyable way to end a sunday night. My girlfriend thought it was horrible, probably because she expected a faster moving plot. I thought Chirgurh was a great character, and I really enjoyed the sparsity of diaglogue throughout the film, especially how characters did not speak outload to explain their actions… seems more realistic to me.
Motel Room ending:
I agree that the mexican gang probably killed Moss. I also think Chirgurh was hiding behind the front door of the motel when Tommy Lee Jones came in, and then left when he was in the bathroom. I thought the way the door stopped soundlessly against the wall when TLJ entered was an indicator of this, and I could have sworn that it was further away from the wall when TLJ sat on the bed.
I saw No Country a week ago and I’m still not sure if I liked it. The movie took a few unexpected turns and had a very unique feel, but I’m still not sure if the Coen brothers accomplished what they wanted.
For me, the jury is still out.
There’s one thing that I still don’t understand about that scene. Chirgurh had no problem with killing anyone who remotely inconvenienced him, but he let the sheriff live? I noticed that when he looked at the grating and screws on the floor, it also showed a coin, with heads up. I thought it might be a call back to earlier when the guy at the gas station won his life in the coin toss, and Chirgurh decided to let the sheriff live based on another coin toss.
Interesting. I imagined that the coin was used to unscrew the grate, and held no other significance, but it didn’t really need to be shown.
At this point in the movie, I imagine that Chigurh has the money, so his quest is over. If he does not need to kill the sherrif, then he won’t- why bring extra heat down on you?
The people he’s killed, to that point, could all either identify him, had something he needed, or tried to kill him. And there’s Carla Jean, who he’d “promised” to kill.
Bell didn’t fit any of those categories. He’s not a threat to Chigurh - which they both know - so Chigurh decides he’s not even worth killing.
Bell didn’t see him. I think if he’d seen him Chigurh would have killed him without a second’s thought.
Of course that brings up the fact that he did not kill the too boys at the end, and only requests that they tell anyone else that they did not see him and that he had already left when they got there. I think this is evidence both for your point and against it. On one hand, he was in no condition to kill those to kids, on the other they had seen him and would likely be pressured to provide a description of him when the authorities came and saw his car (presumably with a satchel full of money).
Other notes of interest:
It seemed like more than one of the bundles of money in the case was made up of one dollar bills sandwiched between hundreds, and not just the one with the transponder. Did anyone see this?
Did the sheriff know that Chigurh was using the cattle executing tool to kill people and deadbolts? Is that why he told Carla Jean the story? Or was that simply a way to give the audience an idea of what the hell it was Chigurh was using all movie?
I have to say that this thread has really done a lot to help me understand this movie.
I must admit, I’m still not sure how much I really “get” the movie. The bit with the car collision at the end in particular really confused me, and I’m still not entirely sure what the point is.
In addition, I was really baffled as to what the point of Woody Harrelson’s character was. He seems like a big deal when he shows up, only to be killed something like ten minutes later. What, exactly, is his significance?
I think the purpose of Harrelson’s character was twofold:
- To show who was behind Chigurh and sending him after the money. (Explaining why mulitple groups were in search of it)
- To show that even Harrelson, whom we presume to be a badass bounty hunter/killer/man without a conscience, feels that Chigurh is a crazy killer with several screws loose.
My husband and I saw this yesterday and loved it - thought the ending was perfect. It works if you don’t try to force it into a standard Hollywood narrative structure. In my opinion, the end or meaning of the movie was explained by the man in the wheelchair, who I gather was some sort of relative to the sheriff. The line was something to do with knowing when to cut your losses (put a tournaquet on it, I think he said). I thought that TLJ knew he would lose what he had if he tried to follow Chigurh. “No Country for Old Men” is the both the perfect title and the explanation for his decision to simply stop.
Wow, could I have said that a little more awkwardly? I know what I meant, anyway.