DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum No Country For Old Men

Question for anyone who has seen it...

What is the significance of the ending? I followed it all the way up through the last 15-20 mins. Can anyone help me out here?

Loved the movie, didnt quite get the ending, hopefully someone on here will shed some light and it wont be as simple as I view it now.

by simple you mean...

bad guy wins, and tommy lee jones gives up? essentially?

I mean...thats what ive considered, but that just doesnt sound right. I feel like something deeper has to be there.

It was in my opinion best movie of last year and in my top five of all time. I thought the ending was great, it closed the movie for me in the perfect way.

Here's what I got out of it, not saying I'm right but just how I took it.

Throughout the movie the concept of fate played a strong role. Anton Chigurgh (sp?) flipped a coin to decide if he was going to kill certain characters. He even said at one point the coin got into the situation the same way he did. At one point a character even said "you can't stop what's coming". And that was basically it, your fate is out there and it's going to find you that was the message in a way. You can make choices but in the end it's mostly all fate. Saying all this, what would have been the point of ending the movie any other way? Let's say Tommy Lee's character gives chase, hunts down Chigurgh and jails him. Does that mean Lee prevailed because he was good...no! It was simply determined by fate, morals had no influence, only chance brought on by a long series of events. Or what if Chigurgh got away did bad prevail and Jones lose, no it was simply fate playing out. Basically what I'm saying what's the point of knowing the ending if it carries no moral message. It really wouldn't have mattered if Jones caught him or not, there would be no significance behind it basically he lucked his way into it. I think Jones' character accepted this and realized there was really no point in giving chase one way or the other things would work itself out. "good" won't prevail and neither will "evil" they're both equal in fates eyes.

J.C....

Jones character wasn't even chasing Anton, he was only trying to find and help Llewelyn.

Here's the intro Narration:

Quote:

---

I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriff's at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carry one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Borkins wouldn't wear one up in Camanche County. I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself gainst the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how theyd've operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."

---

ok thanks fellas.

Yea, I guess by gives up, i more meant...on the whole job. Giving up because he's seen too much, that was the impression.

I really enjoyed the movie. It seems like a fitting ending in retrospect, but it just caught me off guard at first.


However...

Mr Mojo...you think he killed the wife? Because she said it wasnt up to the coin...it was up to him. and they only showed him leave, they didnt show if he did anything or not.

I don't have time to pop in the dvd and check, but I'm pretty sure he did something like, wiping his feet when he left the house, which was something he did earlier in the movie when he killed someone.

I think I remember him doing something at least that made me sure he killed her.

I think he killed her because he checked his feet at the front door to make sure there was no blood...at least that is the way I saw it...

I did see that, and gave that a thought, but the coin flip was just conflicting, but yea i suppose so.

Have it sitting on my kitchen counter.....haven't watched it though. Didn't look interesting, but that isn't what I'm hearing about it.

It was interesting, until the end. The ending ruined the entire movie for me.

Watch it this weekend..it's a great movie!

Damn !!!!!!!! That Thread Title had me fooled there for a second....I thought that they were going to ask us Old Men to leave the country!!!!! It's only a movie whew!!!!

i loved this movie, and i enjoy some of your guys' perspectives...

at first, i didn't like the ending, but the more i thought about it, the more i saw how fitting it was...

the coen brothers are so great at what they do, i hope they never stop making movies...

i think the thing that gets overlooked most, is that this whole thing could have been avoided had Moss never gone back to do a good deed by giving that man water

i thought it was kind ironic in a way...

great movie though, i've gotta pick it up on dvd...

I thought the whole thing was pretty forgetable. I didn't get anything out of it.

thats true...had he avoided going back. Only dumb luck of them driving by his house and the tracker going off couldve really screwed him.

What I didnt like, was that the guy jumped in the truck to get away. Or that he went with so many people to kill him, he'd done so much else on his own.

But the ending is very fitting. I too didnt think it was worthwhile at the end, but the more i think about it, the better it fits. It's very good, and its realistic too.

Badass killer does his work and gets away, and the good guy does something stupid that leads to his downfall. It's pretty likely of what would happen in a situation like that I feel.

I thought the movie was just ok and the ending was pretty much a let down. Although I went to see There Will be Blood and liked it quite a lot so I guess everyones movie tastes are different.

If you haven't seen Blood, see it!!!

that movie was unbelieveably good. I loved everything about it. hahaha, cept that fight at the end was one of the most pitiful things ive ever seen...hahaha, i laughed so hard, then went stone faced just thinking...OH...shoot.

great movie

Movie tastes are definitely different. I thought this was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The acting was decent but what the hell was the point of the movie? If you like a kill-fest you'll love this flick. Looking for a plot or a point to it all?........Good Luck here........

Haven't seen the movie, but non-traditional and/or deliberately vague endings usually mean one of two things ... 1.) the producers are sticking a thumb in the eye of traditional American values and mores ... in this case, the belief in the triumph of good over evil, or 2.) there's gonna be a sequel.

Here's the New York Times Book Review on the novel:

July 24, 2005
'No Country for Old Men': Texas Noir
By WALTER KIRN

LIKE classic French cooking, the best American crime fiction relies on a limited number of simple ingredients (which may be why it's so popular in France). Too much temptation. Too little wisdom. Too many weak, bad men. Too few strong, good ones. And spread over everything, freedom. Freedom and space. The freedom (perhaps illusory) to make poor choices and the space (as real as the highways) to flee their consequences -- temporarily, at least. Corny and crude in the way of all great folk art, the intrinsically pessimistic crime novel -- as opposed to the basically optimistic detective novel -- is not about the workings of human justice but the dominion of inhuman time. As devised and refined by James M. Cain, Jim Thompson and their gloomy paperback peers, the crime novel aimed its cheap handgun at the heart of America's most prized beliefs about its destiny: that the loot we've scooped up will belong to us forever and that history allows clean getaways.

Cormac McCarthy's ''No Country for Old Men'' is as bracing a variation on these noir orthodoxies as any fan of the genre could expect, although his admirers may not be sure at first about quite how to take the book, which doesn't bend its genre or transcend it but determinedly straightens it back out. After the critical and popular triumphs of ''All the Pretty Horses'' and its sequels (known collectively as the Border Trilogy), the late-middle-aged McCarthy found himself so thoroughly trussed in garlands and draped in medals that it's a wonder he could breathe, let alone pick up his pen again. Hailed for having elevated the western from a pop amusement to a high-art form and designated as Hemingway and Faulkner's sole legitimate successor, he might have been wise to let his writing hand be removed at the wrist, embalmed and bronzed.

Instead, he decided to have some nasty fun and write like a fellow who was still alive, shedding the murky, grand German philosophizing that bogged down the last two installments of his trilogy for a sleeker, slimmer linguistic manner and a darting movie-ready narrative that rips along like hell on wheels because it has no desire to break new ground, only to burn rubber on hard-packed old ground, thereby packing it down harder.

The compulsory drug deal gone wrong that drops the flag on this race with the devil takes place in the desert, in the West Texas jurisdiction of Sheriff Bell, an unreconstructed patriarchal geezer for whom aggressively enforcing the law is less important than passively keeping the peace. He's a watchdog, not an attack dog, content to doze until wrongdoers give him no option but to bite, which he does without breaking the skin, if possible. His drawling, cracker-barrel soliloquies overflow with crusty red-state sentiments that may or may not represent the author's feelings but probably don't violate them terribly. Bell, no public radio moral relativist, has walked over too much cactus in his lifetime to care about the tender sensibilities of those who've stayed safely in their flower gardens. Satan exists, the world is getting worse, and God is too busy with other matters to care. He's written us off and moved on to fresh creations.

''She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I dont like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I dont think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she'll be able to have an abortion. I'm goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.''

Bell's melancholy ride into the sunset is interrupted when Llewelyn Moss, a local man out hunting antelope, happens upon a briefcase stuffed with cash and casually flings his soul into the pit by bending over to pick it up rather than heading straight home to his wife, which is where men belong but find it hard to stay (the book's definition of original sin). The only question that remains is how long his gory punishment will take, and how many innocents will perish with him. McCarthy's snake-and-scorpion theology offers his characters no second chances, and it hints that their first chances never, in fact, existed. Moss scampers off with the dough because he must, and the gun-toting demons who chase him have no choice, either. The drug trade that yielded the money is also fated; a landslide of evil stirred by one kicked pebble that won't let up until the Second Coming. ''It starts,'' Bell thinks, ''when you begin to overlook bad manners. Any time you quit hearin Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight.''

The ''broken windows'' theory of crime prevention has never been so drastically condensed. Is this countrified bleak fundamentalism a spoof? At times, the whole novel borders on caricature, so unremittingly hard-boiled that it threatens to turn to steam. The streamlined, barely punctuated sentences delineate the grisly action -- from running gun battles on small-town Main Streets to the agonized bandaging of bullet wounds in obscure motel rooms -- in the point-by-point manner of a technical manual, enumerating every muzzle blast and diagraming every ambush as though violence were a dry industrial process. The characters' states of mind rate little commentary and are completely dissolved in their behavior, which consists of fleeing and fighting and little else. The women involved are on hand to cower, grieve and plead for explanations of the mayhem that the men who've unleashed it decline to give them, partly out of old-school chivalry but mostly because they don't have any answers. All the men have is momentum and loaded weapons, which seem to fire of their own volition, since that's what loaded weapons like to do.

''It's a mess, aint it Sheriff?'' Bell's deputy asks him. ''If it aint it'll do till a mess gets here,'' Bell responds. McCarthy's dialogue is like this: every question sets up a one-two punch, and most of the sparring partners sound alike. Chigurh, the chief villain, throws the cleanest jabs. He's a strict, conscientious, self-taught psychopath who vigilantly maintains his mental ill health. He's purged himself of all qualms and second thoughts so as to function smoothly in the world that Bell, the Goldwaterian granddad, has grown unfit for. When in doubt -- and Chigurh rarely is -- he shoots someone point-blank or pierces his forehead with a pneumatic instrument designed for slaughtering cattle. He wears this tool strapped to his body like a prosthesis, and the story leaves no doubt that he'll prevail over beings who aren't so well equipped. Chigurh has achieved an evil state of grace that the ambivalent masses will never know.

Such sinister high hokum might be ridiculous if McCarthy didn't keep it moving faster than the reader can pause to think about it. He's a whiz with the joystick, a master-level gamer who changes screens and situations every few pages. The choreographed conflicts, set on a stage as big as Texas but as spiritually claustrophobic as a back-room cockfight ring, resolve themselves with a mechanistic certitude that satisfies the brain's brute love of pattern and bypasses its lofty emotional centers. Like Bell, we can only sit back and watch the horror, not wishfully influence its outcome. The clock has been wound, the key's been thrown away, and the round will not end until the hands reach midnight. The book leaves the feeling that we don't have long to wait.

*Walter Kirn is a regular contributor to the Book Review. His fourth novel, ''Mission to America,'' will be published in October.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Swordfish did the same thing years ago by having the bad guy win. They then tried to quickly spin it at the very, very end by making the bad guy somewhat of a good guy because he's killing other terrorists with the money he stole. That was a junk movie.

The problem with movies these days is that everything has been done twice over. The only way to be "different" is to push the envelope, do something unconventional, or stick thier thumb into traditional values . Then the critics fall over themselves saying what a great movie it is because it was "different".

Thats fair.

It makes the movie just a good story. actually thats how i felt about Pulp Fiction too.

The best movie I've seen lately where at the end you like the bad guy somewhat at the end is 310 to Yuma, with Russell Crowe. I thought he deserved an Academy award nomination instead of George Clooney.

Great movie ridiculously stupid ending. I didn't get it at all either.

Just clicking...

At first, the ending disappointed me too....until I started thinking about it.

Most people watch the movie thinking it's a traditional hollywood good guy vs. bad guy story where you are rooting for the underdog to win.

But...the story is not about the chase for the money. It's not about good vs. evil. It's not about death or the underdog winning. I don't even think it's about fate.

The story is about the Sheriff and how times are changing so fast around him that he is too scared to look. He doesn't understand how people can be so ruthless. It was never like that for his grandfather or father. Time is passing him by. It truly is "no country for old men" and a perfect ending.

just my take.

and there it is!

that works for me...that explains it for me. I knew that the story was about Tommy Lee, I just couldnt figure out why it was about him.

Thanks Diehard

Good read on the movie That is how I took it also.
I thought it was a good movie , but I never saw the guy with the money getting killed, never saw that coming.