Synopsis for
No Country for Old Men (2007)

The film opens with a shot of desolate, wide-open country in West Texas in June 1980. In a voiceover, the local sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), tells of the changing times: in the old days, some sheriffs never wore guns, as did his late father, who was the sheriff before him; in the modern day and age, however, Bell once sent an unrepentant teenage boy to the electric chair who had killed a girl simply because he wanted to kill someone, had been "fixin'" to do it for some time, and would do it again if he had the chance.

Along a desert highway, a man named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is being arrested by a deputy (Zach Hopkins). Back at the otherwise empty police station, the deputy speaks to Sheriff Bell on the phone, describing an odd device in Chigurh's possession, a compressed air tank which the deputy believes is an oxygen tank like those used by medical patients. The deputy has his back to Chigurh, who sneaks up behind him and garrotes him with his handcuffs just as the deputy hangs up the phone. Chigurh falls back on the floor with the deputy, a strange emotionless grin washing across his face as his wriggling victim finally expires. After cleaning himself up in the station bathroom, Chigurh - driving the deputy's police car - pulls over a man in a Ford along a deserted highway. Politely asking the man to step out the car, Chigurh holds the hose attached to the compressed air tank, placing the nozzle at its end to the puzzled driver's forehead; he fires it through the man's skull, and we sense the device's function as a gun designed to put down cattle. Chigurh then drives off in the man's car.

Elsewhere, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is hunting pronghorns. Setting the sights of his hunting rifle on one, he fires, scattering the animals. Walking to where the herd stood, he notices a trail of blood. Realizing the pronghorn left in a different direction from the blood trail, he spies a wounded pit bull hobbling away. Retracing the dog's trail, Moss eventually comes upon several pickup trucks parked in the middle of the wilderness. Coming closer, he finds several bodies shot to death, most appearing to be Mexican, and even a dead pit bull. Under a tarp in the bed of one pickup, Moss sees what appears to be a great deal of heroin. Opening the passenger door of one of the trucks, he finds the driver is still alive, but badly wounded. The panting stranger begs Moss for "agua", but Moss says that he has no water. Moss asks the man where the "last man standing" - the winner - is, but doesn't get an answer. He carefully takes the man's submachine gun off the seat and an ammo clip from his shirt pocket, and follows another blood trail; he suspects that whoever survived would have sought shade, and heads toward a distant patch of trees. Through his binoculars, he sees someone is sitting under a tree, facing the other way. After waiting some time, seeing that the man does not move, he makes his way to the tree and finds that the man is dead. At his side are a silver Colt .45 pistol and a satchel, which Moss finds to hold $2 million.

Moss returns to his trailer home with the "agua" man's submachine gun (which he hides in the crawl space under the home), the silver pistol and the satchel. Moss's wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), asks Moss what's in the satchel, but doesn't believe him when he off-handedly tells her. That night, Moss can't sleep, guilty that he left the man in the truck to die. He gets up and grabs a jug of water and the semi-automatic, explaining to Carla Jean that he's "fixin' to do something dumber than hell".

Driving up near the site of the drug massacre, Moss goes to find the man and give him water. Upon opening the door, Moss sees that the wounded man is now dead from a gunshot to the head. Looking back to where he'd parked his pickup truck atop the ridge, Moss dimly sees in the predawn light another truck now parked alongside his. Two men get out and slash the tires on Moss' truck. He tries to hide behind one of the dead men's trucks, but is fired upon by the men who are now approaching in their truck, using bright searchlights. Moss flees with the pickup pursuing him, but is shot in the shoulder just as he reaches a river embankment. As Moss tumbles towards the river with dawn breaking, the two men, apparently Mexicans, sic a pit bull on him. Evading continued gunfire, Moss dives into the river and swims downstream, eventually crossing to the other side with the pit bull gaining ground. On the opposite bank, Moss frantically dries his .45 and manages to shoot the pit bull dead just as it leaps at him. Returning to his trailer, Moss tends to his wounds and puts Carla Jean on a bus to go stay with her mother.

After filling up at a gas station in the dead man's Ford, Chigurh goes to pay for some candy from the gas station proprietor (Gene Jones). When the proprietor tries to make polite conversation out of simple friendliness, Chigurh gets upset at the inane smalltalk, and engages the man in a quiet but increasingly hostile debate over the point of his amiable questions; the man is genuinely perplexed by his customer's anxiety, and tries to defuse the argument by saying he needs to close the station, which only further irritates Chigurh due to it being still midday. He asks the man what is the most he's lost in a coin toss, and it becomes increasingly clear that Chigurh will harm the proprietor if he calls the wrong side of the coin. Much to his relief, the proprietor calls the right side of the coin, which Chigurh insists he must always hang onto and keep separate from his other coins, because this is now a "lucky" coin.

After nightfall, two men in suits pick up Chigurh and bring him to the drug massacre. They note Moss' slashed tires and assume that the Mexicans did it. Chigurh tears the identification plate out of Moss's truck and proceeds to survey the massacre with the two men. The two men give him a transponder on which they said they're getting "not a bleep." Chigurh picks up a gun laying next to one of the several massacred men at the site and coolly shoots them both dead with it.

The following morning, Sheriff Bell is called into check out a roadside car fire, which draws attention to the nearby drug massacre site. Meeting his inexperienced deputy, Wendell (Garret Dillahunt), Sheriff Bell tells him they'll ride horseback to the drug massacre. The car on fire is the Ford belonging to the man Chigurh killed the day before. While going over the massacre, Sheriff Bell recognizes the truck parked nearby as belonging to Moss.

Going to the Mosses' trailer, Chigurh uses his cattle gun to smash open the lock on the door. Recognizing that they've left in a hurry, Chigurh briefly sits on their couch and drinks some of their milk. He goes through the mail which has been delivered, and examines their phone bill which includes numerous calls to the same number in another city. He then goes over to the office of the trailer park manager (Kathy Lamkin) and questions her about Llewelyn's whereabouts. When the manager refuses to tell Chigurh where Moss works, he seems to contemplate killing her, but changes his mind when he hears someone in the bathroom. Sheriff Bell and Deputy Wendell go into the Moss trailer a bit later and see that someone has shot open Moss's lock. Moss has driven off to stay in a motel, where he hides the satchel of money in his room's ventilation duct. He purchases some camping equipment, finally agreeing to buy an entire tent when it becomes evident that just buying the tent poles will be a nuisance, and also gets a shotgun. He returns to the motel, and rents the room adjacent to the rear wall of his previous room. There, he fashions a pole with a hook (made of cut clothes hangers) duct-taped to the end of the pole. He also saws off the end of the shotgun.

That night, Chigurh is driving around when the transponder he received from the two men starts to go off. The transponder's signal becomes more frequent as he pulls up to the motel, and by the frequency of its beeping he deduces which room the signal is coming from. Chigurh checks into the motel. He takes off his boots so he can quietly walk up to the room where the signal is coming from. Again he uses the cattle gun to break open the door. Inside are two Mexican men, one with a semi-automatic rifle, but he quickly and bloodily dispatches both with a silenced shotgun. Going into the bathroom, he finds a third man cowering behind the shower curtain. He closes the curtain and kills the third man with the shotgun. Hearing the commotion, Moss uses the hooked pole to quietly pull out the satchel of money into his new room, and calls a cab. When he hears the sound of the satchel dragging in the ventilation duct, Chigurh uses a dime to unscrew the grate and look inside. Moss gets away from the motel in the cab before Chigurh is able to find him.

The next day, in a high-rise office building in Dallas, a bounty hunter named Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) comes into the big office of a businessman (Stephen Root). Wells tells the stern businessman that he has had past dealings with Chigurh and would know him by sight. Wells also compares Chigurh to the bubonic plague and calls him a psychopathic killer. The businessman hires Wells to control the "situation" with Chigurh.

That night, Moss goes to an old hotel near the Mexico border. While checking into the room, he asks the desk clerk how late he'll be working. The desk clerk tells him 10 A.M. Moss gives him some money and asks him to give him a call in the room to let him know if anyone checks in, as someone (not the police) is after him. Moss is unable to sleep that night while pondering how Chigurh was able to track him down to the previous motel. Digging through the satchel with the money, he finds a signal transmitter embedded in a hollowed-out pack of bills, and he realizes Chigurh was able to track his signal with it. Hearing creaking footsteps coming down the hallway, Moss calls the hotel desk; he can hear the phone ringing from downstairs, but there is no answer. Moss sits on the bed with his sawed-off shotgun pointing at the door. The sound of the transponder is heard from the hallway, and the footsteps go down the hall to unscrew the light bulb so that the shadow of feet will not be seen under the door. Suddenly, just as Moss perhaps realizes that his position directly in front of the door might not be ideal, Chigurh's air gun blasts the lock through the door and hits Moss in his right abdomen. Moss returns fire, rendering the hallway momentarily silent. Moss climbs out the window and drops to the sidewalk with the satchel and his shotgun. As Moss is dropping out the window, Chigurh bursts in and shoots Moss in his side. After falling out the window, Moss collects his shotgun and satchel and drags himself around the nearest corner to avoid Chigurh's continual shotgun blasts at him. Moss goes into the hotel lobby to check on the desk clerk and finds that Chigurh had indeed killed him.

Moss then runs out into the street to wave down a man in a small truck. The man seems startled by Moss's bloody appearance and firearm, but just after Moss gets into the passenger seat, the man is killed by shots to the throat and face from Chigurh's semiautomatic machine gun. The unseen Chigurh continues to blast away at the truck as Moss tries to speed off in it from the passenger side, with the dead driver still in the driver's seat. Turning a corner, Moss crashes into a parked car. Moss gets out to hide behind a parked car on the other side of the street. Using the reflection in a store window, he sees Chigurh walk up to the crash. Just as Chigurh begins to see where Moss's blood trail leads, Moss fires a series of shots at Chigurh. Chigurh dives beneath the car Moss had crashed into as Moss continues to shoot at him. Crossing the street, Moss sees that Chigurh has left behind his silenced machine gun and has escaped through the nearby darkened alley.

Walking along the bridge from Texas to Mexico, Moss encounters a group of frat boys. He has lost so much blood, he can barely stand. He gives five hundred dollars to one of the startled college kids in exchange for his jacket and a bottle of beer. After the frat boys leave, Moss throws the satchel over the high barrier into the reeds beside the bridge, and uses the beer bottle as an excuse for his messy appearance when he passes the guard station to cross over to Mexico; the guard is unconcerned with his identity, as his primary attention would be directed toward anyone crossing in the other direction.

Passed out next to a fountain, Moss is awoken in the morning by a mariachi band who at first play happily for him but are then stopped when they see the blood spreading from his wound. He asks for medical help. That same morning, Chigurh limps up to a drugstore, one of Moss's shots having hit him in the leg. Removing the gas tank cap from a car parked in front of the drugstore, he dips cloth in the gasoline and lights the tip of the cloth with a lighter. As he walks into the drugstore, the car explodes, creating panic among all those inside. As the clerks and customers run out to find out if anyone has been injured or is in need of help, Chigurh nonchalantly strides into the pharmacy at the drugstore's rear and makes off with a bunch of medical supplies. Back at his hotel room, Chigurh lays plastic down on the floor, injects a heavy dose of the stolen lidocaine into his leg, and proceeds to remove the shotgun pellets. He then cleans his leg in the bath, removes the remaining shrapnel, and methodically stitches his wounds.

Sheriff Bell tracks down Carla Jean to see if she knows where Moss is running. When she truthfully tells him she has no idea where Moss is, Bell warns her to let him know if she hears anything from him. Later, Deputy Wendell tells Sheriff Bell that the D.E.A. wants to go over the drug massacre site with him, but Bell tiredly declines. He rambles about a newspaper article about a couple who rented rooms to elderly people, then tortured and killed them so they could collect their social security checks. They remained unsuspected despite the numerous fresh graves in their yard, until a victim escaped into town wearing nothing but a dog collar. Bell quietly expresses his bewilderment at the callous brutality of such crimes, which seem to be increasing as the years pass.

When Moss awakens in a Mexican hospital, he sees Wells is at his bedside with flowers, having apparently been able to track him down within three hours. Wells explains that he is willing to help Moss, and that he may be able to arrange to give him a small cut of the money if Moss returns it, but that Chigurh will not be making any such deals; he dryly notes how easily Moss was found despite his best efforts to be elusive. It is revealed that both Moss and Wells are Vietnam veterans. When Moss asks if "Sugar" is the "ultimate bad ass", Wells says Chigurh has no sense of humor but does have his own code of honor. Wells gives Moss the number to his hotel room to give Moss time to consider the deal. Walking back over the U.S.-Mexico bridge, Wells is able to see where Moss has thrown the satchel.

When Wells walks back into his hotel, Chigurh follows him in. Chigurh greets Wells warmly, but keeps him at gun-point. Upstairs in the room, Wells recognizes the bleakness of his situation and desperately tries to cut a deal with Chigurh. He offers to retrieve the money for Chigurh, but Chigurh remains uninterested in any deal. Upon realizing that there's no way Chigurh will let him live, Wells resigns himself to the predicament and tells his adversary how crazy he must be. When the room phone rings, Chigurh kills Wells. Chigurh answers the phone, and it's Moss calling. Chigurh lets Moss know that he knows exactly where he is and, instead of coming to kill him in the hospital, he is going to go to Carla Jean's mother's house, which he has located from the phone bill, and kill her. He makes an offer that Moss give him the money and his own life, in exchange for allowing Carla Jean to live. Moss tells Chigurh he won't have to come after him, because he will come after Chigurh. Walking back from Mexico into Texas, still in his hospital gown, Moss uses his veteran experience to verify his nationality to the Border Patrol agent, who admits him back into the United States. He then goes into the same store in which he had previously bought boots to buy some new clothes. He then recovers the satchel. Moss then calls Carla Jean and tells her to take her mother on the bus to El Paso, meet him at a motel where he's gotten a room, then fly off to some safe location.

Back at the Dallas office building of the businessman who hired Wells, Chigurh bursts in to find the businessman conversing with someone from "accounting," and shoots the businessman in the face. Chigurh tells the accounting man that the businessman was at fault for bringing the "Mexicans" in on the case. When the accounting man asks Chigurh if he's going to shoot him too, Chigurh says as he turns to face the man: "That depends. Have you seen me?" Soon after, Chigurh feigns being broken down on a roadside. When a chicken farmer in a flatbed pickup pulls over to assist, Chigurh asks where the nearest airport is. The man tells him El Paso. Chigurh asks if the chicken crates can be removed from the truck, which puzzles the driver. Cut to a car wash, where Chigurh is cleaning the feathers out of the farmer's truck.

Moss is by the pool at his motel where a sun-bathing girl flirts with him. She tells Moss that she has beer back in her room. He says that he's married and that he knows what beer leads to, and declines her offer.

After they've arrived at the bus station, Carla Jean steps away from her ailing mother, Agnes (Beth Grant), to call Sheriff Bell and report where Moss is to meet them.

A Mexican in a suit gets out of a car containing three other shady-looking Mexican guys, and offers to help Agnes with their luggage. He chats her up, and she trustingly tells him exactly where they are going; she is unenthused about the trip, as she is suffering from cancer and would prefer to remain at home. He and his associates drive off. A bit later, Sheriff Bell is driving up to Moss' motel as he sees, to his creeping dismay, a violent commotion at Moss's motel, with a truck speeding off. An injured Mexican man runs out of a room. Going into the motel, Sheriff Bell sees that both the girl by the pool and Llewelyn Moss have been shot and killed.

After dealing with local law enforcement associates and comforting Carla Jean, Sheriff Bell goes back alone to the hotel room where Moss was killed. Seeing that the motel room door has been smashed open in Chigurh's favored style, Bell draws his gun. We see Chigurh leaning against a wall in the dark (seemingly awaiting Bell) with his cattle gun and apparent fear or sadness in his teary eyes. Bell opens the room door and looks around the room and the bathroom, not finding anyone. Sitting on the bed, Sheriff Bell notices that the ventilation duct has been opened with a dime, just as Chigurh had opened the vent earlier.

Apparently weeks later, Bell drives to a farm to visit his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin). Bell has retired, news which is frustrating for Ellis. When Bell explains that he felt "outmatched", Ellis tells him that we have to continue with our lives no matter how evil life gets.

Later still, Agnes has died, and upon returning from her funeral, Carla Jean finds Chigurh sitting in her mother's house. Chigurh explains that he made a "promise" to Moss that he was going to kill her. Chigurh offers that if she calls correctly in a coin toss, he'll spare her life. Carla Jean dismisses Chigurh's game, saying that he's the one who decides on whether or not to kill her, not the coin. He is unmoved, however, insisting on his lack of a free choice in the matter. During this exchange, we see two boys ride past the house on bicycles. We next see Chigurh walking out of the house, stopping to check his boots, apparently, for blood.

Driving off, he is looking at the same two boys in the rear view mirror as he proceeds through the green light when he is suddenly hit broadside by a car speeding through the intersection that he just entered. The other driver appears dead, but Chigurh gets out of his car, his eye nearly popped out of his skull and his bone protruding out of his elbow in a compound fracture. The two neighborhood boys come up to him to see if he's all right. Chigurh pays the kids for one of their shirts, which he uses to make a rough-and-ready sling for his arm, and to have them not report having seen him. Chigurh limps away down the street.

At Sheriff Bell's house, he ponders what to do for the day at breakfast with his wife, Loretta (Tess Harper); he is restless in retirement, but she rebuffs his offer to help out around the house, as he will just throw off her established routine. He recounts a dream he had about his sheriff father. Bell dreamed that he and his father were riding a mountain pass in the night. His father, carrying a horn with embers inside that glowed like moonlight, rode ahead into the darkness and disappeared. Though he couldn't see anything in the dark night, Bell dreamed that he kept riding forward since his father would have a warm fire waiting for him. Bell ends the film with the final words: "And then I woke up."