Anton Chigurh

At first, I thought the gas tank was for inhalation a la David Lynch's Blue Velvet, to intensify the experience of snuffing out the life of another. The strangulation murder of the young police officer dispelled that theory. And then, as he strode alongside a car, red and blues flashing, I thought he was going to bludgeon the hapless motorist with the tank. Instead, Anton Chigurh politely asked the man to step out of the car and hold still as he placed the end of his pneumatic weapon on his forehead. In an instant, the man's brains sprayed the Texas plain red.

Such is the depth of No Country For Old Men. In a single scene, the Coen Brothers encapsulate many of the ideas swirling around and in the story of Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finding a sack of money, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) hunting him down, and Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) attempting to right the cosmic and judicial wrong both men have created.

No Country For Old Men bends and pivots on Chigurh's bloodlust and philosophical prying. Chigurh's interaction with an unsuspecting gas clerk in Nowheresville, TX, throws the issues of free will and life into stark relief. As the gas clerk unthinkingly makes small talk, Chigurh presses him for the real intent behind his meaningless babblings. After learning of the clerk's marriage into the family that owned the gas station--a real accomplishment from the clerk's perspective--a half-exasperated Chigurh decides that fate should either end this man's life or make him realize the vacuousness of his current station. Chigurh flips a coin and makes the clerk call it, who balks at calling a flip of which he knows not the stakes. The stakes, Chigurh assures him, are everything. He calls heads. It's heads. Fate spared the life of the clerk, and Chigurh insists that he not lose the coin, not get it mixed up with the others.

Chigurh murders those who have chosen to die. The man chose to get out of the car and stay still. The man chose heads; if it would have been tails, then he would have chosen death--a fate, in Chigurh's eyes, better than his existence as a store clerk for his father-in-law's gas station. Moss chose to take the money. And Moss chose not give back the money and forfeit his own life in exchange for his wife's life. The free will of man and the theoretically contrasting dictates of fate carry the weight of life and death. All choose to die.

Except for Carla Jean, Moss's wife. Chigurh claims that he must kill her because he promised Moss he would do so if he wasn't given back the money. He finds her relatively innocent, and thus allows her one final reprieve: a coin toss. "Call it." And she refuses. She says that it's not the coin, but Chigurh himself. She says the coin doesn't decide, fate doesn't decide who lives or who dies...Chigurh does. Carla Jean flips Chigurh's own worldview on its head and calls him to account for his actions, not letting the evil Chigurh perpetrates to be so hastily cast off onto the gods' shoulders. Chigurh checks the soles of his boots for blood as he exits the house. Chigurh chooses to kill. In No Country For Old Men, the real hero--if that term can even be used in the context of this story--is Carla Jean. Moss succumbs to greed, Chigurh to violence. Bell, though morally centered and honest, lacks the will to destroy evil. Carla Jean sees through Chigurh's philosophical facade, calls Moss to account for his actions, and illuminates a clear path to heroism for Bell. All three either shun or balk at her urgings.