comment #1

T. Holly says ...

He should have had a canteen, like McCandless should have had a map, but he and his wife would have been sitting ducks, on account of the transponder, if he hadn't gone back and subsequently run away, and that wouldn't have been a fun movie.

comment #2

T. Holly says ...

OK, not necessarily. Chigurh wouldn't have had a head start on Moss. Moss was a dumb lug with a heart of gold and a character arc.

comment #3

JD says ...

This idea that he's punished for a lapse of goodness is essential to the movie. However, the "incorrect" plot descriptions are also accurate. If he hadn't taken the money -- and only returned to give the dying man water -- he'd be fine, wouldn't he? The fact that he took the money is still central to his decline.

comment #4

Silverscreenvideos says ...

The transponder is the one thing in the movie that really bothers me. When we first see the receiver, it's got a limited range: no signal at the shooting site because Moss has taken the money, and none in Del Rio until Anton (who spotted Moss's phone bill)gets pretty close to the motel. That makes sense.

Then how did the Mexicans get to the hotel ahead of Anton? They didn't know Moss would be going to Del Rio. And it doesn't make sense that Anton's boss would have given them a more powerful receiver (if one existed) than he gave his assistants to give Anton.

The trip from Del Rio to Eagle Pass (which is about a one hour drive) I can buy. It's possible Moss hitched a ride pretty quickly and that Anton was close enough after hunting for the money to spot Moss but would not want to risk running the other car off the road. Then when Moss got dropped off at the hotel, he could have taken a couple of minutes to park his car and go to the hotel.

But it's that first encounter in Del Rio that I just can't buy... that the Mexicans would be able to find one hotel in all of West Texas where Moss was.

comment #5

le corbeau says ...

Yeah, I thought that about the water too when I saw it, but accepted it as necessary to the plot. And I still question this idea that you could track more than, say, a couple of miles at most with a dinky 1980 transponder; the bad guys would have been driving up and down the streets of every city within 50 miles, waiting for a blip. But then I also want to know where the statewide manhunt for the escaped copkiller is.

In other words, there's a really good realistic movie about the hunt for a killer this year, and it's called Zodiac, not No Country For Old Men.

comment #6

Joe Leydon says ...

And if the pursuing Indians had simply shot at the horses instead of firing at the passengers, Stagecoach would have ended a lot earlier than it did.

comment #7

MickTravis says ...

Yeah, the transponder screws with the notion that it was the water that brought about Moss' doom.

But I find the transponder the most complicating and least satisfying element of both the movie and the book.

And I don't think Moss is a dumb lug, either. He makes a couple of mistakes but otherwise he's pretty methodical, instinctive and patient.

comment #8

Bart Smith says ...

I got the impression that Moss returned—not to bring a dying man water—but to wash away the fingerprints he had left.

Am I wrong here?

comment #9

T. Holly says ...

Yup you're wrong Bart. Mick, Moss was a simple hunting man living in a trailer with a wife who works at Walmart and a Christian conscience keeping him awake at night, not about taking the crooks' money, but about a thirsty dying man, and he became the things you said, plus he calculated, a lot. So his need to survive brought about an arc. No one else in the movie changed.

comment #10

Josh Massey says ...

He had a truck. If he was just going out for a couple of hours, why would he have needed to bring water? It's not like he made a 3-hour hike to where he was.

comment #11

Sean says ...

Jeff, you're wrong. If Moss hadn't gone back with the water, the transponder would've led them right to him *and* he wouldn't have known that they were coming. It would have probably taken them an extra day or two, since they wouldn't have had his car as an actual clue, but everybody that Stephen Root sent seemed to be pretty good at tracking him with or without the transponder (as others have said, the Mexicans *obviously* figured out approximately where he was before using the transponder, otherwise they wouldn't have beaten Chigurh there).

comment #12

MickTravis says ...

Actually, Holly, Moss was a veteran of a couple of tours in Vietnam. He's calculating from the moment he sees the wreckage of the drug deal and starts looking for the last man standing. Granted, that's more obvious in the novel, but the Coens take great pains to get it into the script and the movie without actually pounding us over the head with it.

But that's just quibbling. You're right, he is the only one with an arc.

comment #13

christian says ...

I wish Denham had never taken Ann Darrow to Skull Island.

comment #14

Gus Petch says ...

Moss's action makes no sense, not even on a foolishly-doing-the-right-thing level. He obviously understands that he's dealing with very bad men who will want the money back. So he decides to save the life of the one bad guy who can identify him? What was he planning to do if he found agua-guy in the truck still alive? Give him water and then shoot him in the head? It makes no sense. It's a decent-sized plot hole in an otherwise tightly plotted movie.

comment #15

Silverscreenvideos says ...

It would have probably taken them an extra day or two, since they wouldn't have had his car as an actual clue, but everybody that Stephen Root sent seemed to be pretty good at tracking him with or without the transponder (as others have said, the Mexicans *obviously* figured out approximately where he was before using the transponder, otherwise they wouldn't have beaten Chigurh there).

That's the problem I have. There's no way, obvious or not, for the Mexicans to figure out "approximately" where he is when they have no idea who he is. Chigurh figured out who he was from the registration on his truck and traced him to Del Rio by his phone bill.

The movie goes to great lengths to show how Chigurh traced him to Del Rio and later how both the Mexicans and Chigurh traced him to El Paso. If there was some logical bit of detective work that would have allowed the Mexicans to get to Del Rio before him, why didn't the movie show that as well?

I don't have a problem per se with films that play fast and loose with logic in order to make the plot work, but when a film does take the trouble to show how some things happen and then leaves others hanging, it bothers me.

comment #16

Sean says ...

If you're going to hold it against the movie that it doesn't explicitly tell you every single thing that every single character does, I don't see how you can like 'No Country'; it doesn't ever explain how Chigurh is able to find the exact hotel that Moss is at at the exact same (approximate) time as the Mexicans, it doesn't tell you why Chigurh was arrested in the first place, it never explains how Woody Harrelson is able to track him so quickly (not only finding the right hospital in Mexico, but getting to the right town in the first place), and (the big one) it never tells you whether Chigurh is actually in the motel room at the same time as Bell or what (and, if so, where he is). These are all things about way more important characters than the Mexicans -- who, let's face it, are essentially just cannon fodder at different times, even if they do (questionably) wind up killing Moss.

But if you need a reason: The Mexicans checked his license plate, went to his trailer, waited for T.L. Jones to leave, leaving the door wide open and unlocked, then found a clue and, while Chigurh was dicking around with the gas station guy, they got ahead of him.

The only reason any of that stuff would matter is if the movie were a thriller, but since it isn't, it seems like it would be gratuitous information. Everybody Root sends is impossibly skilled at tracking, because their job depends on being able to do so. If you can buy Chigurh, why can't you believe that there would be less talented versions of him working in the same field?

comment #17

Breedlove says ...

Since Jeff started a comments section, I can't think of any other movie that has brought about such interesting comments and discussion. I love the way everyone analyzes the shit out of this movie. It really is fascinating to me. I've still only seen this once and I badly need to go watch it about a dozen more times.

comment #18

le corbeau says ...

If there was some logical bit of detective work that would have allowed the Mexicans to get to Del Rio before him, why didn't the movie show that as well?

Because one big point of the movie is that fate is way bigger than you are, and just because you've managed to stay ahead of Chigurh so far doesn't mean there isn't somebody else coming to kill you who you'll never see coming any more than Chigurh sees the truck that smashes into him before it happens.

In other words, it's about the pointlessness of thinking you can outsmart the whole universe, or that brains or deserve or anything else have anything to do with why some people get killed and others don't.

comment #19

Jay T. says ...

Uh, he screws himself, but there was still the transponder.

comment #20

frankbooth says ...

What I want to know is where Chigurh's supposed to be from. And I'll slap the first person who says "beats me, but it's no country for old men."

comment #21

frankbooth says ...

Nevermind, found it:

"From the beginning, the Coens didn't want Bardem to do an American accent, but they wanted to reduce his Spanish accent. "In some ways, Anton is a foreigner too," Bardem says. "We don't really know where he is coming from or where he is going to. One of the things we discovered was lowering the voice would be a good way for me to cut the accent and also find a tone where there's a lack of emotion."

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/features/feature_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003685024

Hey, thanks for thinkin' about it, though.