FAQ for
No Country for Old Men (2007)

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. It is assumed that no one who is diligently avoiding spoilers will be visiting this page in the first place.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for No Country for Old Men can be found at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/parentalguide.

"Young Men Dead" by The Black Angels.

The film doesn't give a reason.

In the book, Chigurh told Wells that he had allowed himself get arrested to see if he could escape. Chigurh had murdered a man in a bar fight the previous night; the man had insulted him. According to Chigurh's description, he had either snapped the man's neck or strangled him.

Chigurh uses a captive bolt pistol, which is also known as a cattle gun. The tank itself is pressurized air. Releasing the air valve powers the bolt when triggered.

The story takes place in 1980.

When Chigurh tosses the coin for the gas station proprietor, he says that the date on the coin is 1958, and it took 22 years to get there. The phone bill Chigurh picks up is dated 1980. And 1980 is the date of death on Agnes' grave.

The three Mexicans at the Del Rio motel were hired by the man (Stephen Root) who hires Wells and Chigurh.

When Moss is being taken back by taxi, he asks the driver to drive around to "see if someone is here." He spots a truck in the parking lot that resembles the trucks used in the desert massacre. He also notices that the curtains are slightly open, even though he had closed them before he left. Moss realizes that the Mexicans are waiting in his room to kill him. He tells the driver to take him to another motel, and in the morning he purchases the shotgun and tent poles. He rents the motel room adjacent to the one the Mexicans are hiding in. The vents are connected. As he returns to collect the money, Chigurh arrives. He is shown opening the door quickly and turning on the light. He is testing how fast he can open the door so he might get the drop on the Mexicans: in the next scene, he opens the door in the same way. And then he tests if he can shoot through the wall, which he also does in the next scene.

As Chigurh enters Moss' first motel room and kills the Mexicans, Moss is in the second motel room attempting to get the money out. He is able to escape and hitchhike a ride away from the motel.

Llewelyn Moss goes to the motel and waits to be reunited with Carla Jean and Agnes (her mother). While waiting, the poolside woman flirts with him and offers him beers. The Mexicans knew where he was headed because Agnes had told them at the bus station. During the ensuing shootout, the poolside woman was killed and her body was found in the pool. Moss was able to shoot one of the Mexicans before he was shot in the chest and died inside his motel room. The remaining Mexicans ran off as Sheriff Bell pulled into the parking lot.

Although it is left open for interpretation, it is implied that Anton Chigurh wound up with the money. Since he wasn't part of the El Paso motel shootout, he arrived there too late. After the police activity died down, Chigurh sneaked into Moss' room and unscrewed the vent to retrieve the satchel of money. He knew this is where the money would be because he saw the track marks inside the vent of the Del Rio motel room, and knew that Moss kept it in the vent. When Sheriff Bell arrives at the El Paso motel, he sees that the vent was unscrewed by a coin, which Chigurh used in the previous motel. However, a shot of the vent in the El Paso motel shows that the vent may be too small to have accommodated the case containing the money. But, after Chigurh is involved in the car accident at the end, he offers the bicycle boys a hundred dollar bill, which implies that he did wind up with the money.

(NOTE: In the book, Chigurh found the money and returned it to a third party. Like Wells said, he did have his principles!)

Agnes died of her cancer some time after Moss was killed.

It is implied that Chigurh killed Carla Jean. After she refuses to call the coin toss, Chigurh is seen leaving her house and checking his boots, presumably to make sure he doesn't have any blood on them. In an earlier scene, Chigurh, after shooting Carson Wells, sees the blood coming down the floor and puts his feet on the bed, to avoid getting blood on his boots. Moreover, when Chigurh is driving off, it is in Carla Jean's car, not the chicken farmer's truck he had used to get there--the truck Carla Jean had spotted before finding Chigurh in Agnes' house. (NOTE: In the book, he shot her.)

Chigurh was in the motel room. Bell and Chigurh see each other's reflection in the shot-out lock (this is explicit in the screenplay). The next scene is key: when Bell enters the room he only 'sees' his own shadow and the unscrewed vent. (This scene explains why the accountant in a previous scene had a part at all: to explain that Chigurh doesn't shoot people who don't 'see' him). It is implied that Bell does encounter Chigurh and takes the coward's way out by agreeing that he never saw Chigurh. (Unlike the brave but dead girl who would not give in to the coin toss). This interpretation explains many aspects of the film, including his dreams (guilt over letting Chigurh get away with the money) and the scene where he says that he tries not to lie, but sometimes you have to. He is the storyteller, as the narration makes clear, and this part of the story is a lie.

Another interpretation is that the shots of Chigurh waiting in the motel room came from Bell's imagination; after seeing the punched-out lock, Bell was afraid he would encounter Chigurh and thus pictured him waiting for him, which is why he drew his weapon (presumably for the first time in his career). In the book, when Bell left the motel room, he could "feel" someone watching him, and he called the local police to the parking lot hoping to catch Chigurh, but they never found anyone.

The meaning of the two dreams can be thought of as Bell's fear of some final judgment. The dreams are symbolic, so by whom Bell will be judged is up for interpretation.

Bell explains the first dream to his wife briefly, trying not to make too much of it. But the meaning is quite significant. He says his father met him in town and gave him some money, but he (Bell) lost it. This can be seen as Bell feeling as if he were entrusted with something valuable, but failed to protect it. See this as his responsibility as a law enforcement officer, the lives of the people he was responsible for protecting, his father's wisdom, and so on. It's an acknowledgment of his feelings of failure. In fact, he betrayed his duty as a lawman by letting Chigurh get away. As the teller (narrator) of the story, he lies when he says the motel room was empty (though he doesn't lie habitually). The dreams are his unconscious way of telling the audience the truth. He was entrusted as a lawman to get the money from Chiguhr, but instead agrees that he never 'saw' him.

The second dream is connected with the first. In the second dream, he says he and his father were riding through the mountains in the old times. His father rode up ahead of him and went on into the cold and dark with some fire. Bell said that he knew when he got to where his father was going, his father would be there waiting for him.

His father going up ahead into the cold, dark night with the fire represents his father passing from the physical world into the afterlife (whatever that may be). The fire could represent Bell's father's lifeforce, or spirit.

Bell knows he's going to where his father went, and as the final curtain starts to come down on his life, he's second-guessing his whole existence. What will his father have to say about it? In short, will his father still be waiting for him in 'heaven' after letting him down?

In those final speeches we see that he is really thinking about how he might be largely responsible for his own failings (the first dream). And for him, going on up ahead into the cold darkness and eventually meeting his father means just what you think: he's heading toward the end and a possible final judgment, either by his father, or God, or whomever. And Bell is afraid that if there is a final judgment, it may be a harsh one. Did he measure up to the old-time lawmen? Did he make his father proud? Did he fail more than any of his predecessors in law enforcement (his father, grandfather, etc.) did? After all, he failed to protect Llewelyn and Carla Jean Moss, and he let Chigurh escape.

He's contemplating what many people contemplate as they get old and the curtain starts to come down on their lives: How should I be judged for the coward that I am?

Another more positive reading of the second dream is that Bell's father "lighting a fire in all that dark and all that cold" is Bell overcoming his crisis of faith. His conversation with his uncle starts out with Bell feeling "overmatched." He tells him how God did not come into his life when he got older as Bell thought he would. Then they discuss the cold-blooded, senseless murder of his ancestor from many years ago. His uncle tells him "watcha got ain't nothing new," meaning Bell's feeling of failure in the face of what he thought was a new kind of world that he couldn't understand. Things were always this way for his grandfather and his father. Bell's father could be seen not as a judgment on his failure but rather the reassurance that the life of a sheriff does have meaning despite the "dark and cold" that it encounters and that God (no particular denomination is implied) is indeed in his life.

Carson Wells was a sort of private detective for the underworld, who also happened to be familiar with Chigurh and his ways. He was hired to find Chigurh and track down the money before things got out of hand. (In the book, he had previously worked with Chigurh.)

Yes he is brainy, bordering on genius perhaps, but his tendency to try and flaunt his intelligence is his downfall.

The man who hired Wells also hired Chigurh to find the money. But Chigurh's methods were a little too high-profile (seeing as how he killed everyone he met). The man hires Wells to stop Chigurh and resume his original assignment. But naturally, when Chigurh discovered that Wells was after him and the money, he knew The Man had double-crossed him.

Chigurh was also upset that Wells had hired the Mexicans and gave them a tracking device (this is how they found Llewelyn's room at the motel). He mentions this to the accountant during their conversation.

No. When the accountant asks if Chigurh is going to shoot him, Chigurh replies by saying, "That depends. Do you see me?" The implication is that incidental people who agree that he is a ghost and look the other way may be allowed to live. This scene is important because it explains the strange scene where Bell enters the motel room and sees Chigurh in the lock's reflection but only 'sees' his shadow upon entering.

He would have to kill the two men who take him to the drug-deal-gone-wrong or else they could identify him.