No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men was written by Cormac McCarthy and published in July, 2005.  The novel was drafted as a screenplay.  It contains minimalist prose as a side effect.  The Coen brothers adapted the book into their own script in 2007.  The film shared the same name and won the Oscar for Best Picture and three other Academy Awards.  No Country for Old Men is titled after the first line of W. B. Yeats poem Sailing to Byzantium.

The narrator is unnamed and speaks about sending a nineteen-year-old killer to death row.  Chigurh is in handcuffs in the police station.  A deputy is on the phone.  Chigurh moves his hands under his legs and stands.  He strangles the deputy and releases himself.  He takes his keys and drives away in a squad car.  The lights flash and he pulls over another vehicle on the highway.  He approaches and uses a slaughterhouse stun gun to shoot the driver.

Llewelyn Moss is hunting antelope in the desert.  He uses his binoculars and spots trucks painted with bullet holes.  Lifeless bodies are nearby.  He descends and inspects the carnage.  A man is still alive and asks for water in Spanish.  Moss has none.  He finds several kilos of brown powder and a trail of blood.  The blood leads to a tree.  A dead man and a briefcase are under the tree.  Moss grabs the case and returns to his trailer.  Llewelyn counts two million four hundred thousand dollars.  He heads back to the crime scene with a jug of water.  The man was executed.  Strangers spot him and fire.  Moss flees and leaves no tracks.  He knows they will identify him through his abandoned vehicle in the morning. 

The Aftermath

Deputy Torbert summons Bell to a crime scene.  He takes command and drives to the sheriff’s office in Sonora.  The parking lot is wrapped in yellow crime tape.  Bell is told the murder is the work of a lunatic.  Moss takes the bus home and tells his wife to stay at her mother’s house until he calls.  Chigurh stops at a gas station and confronts the owner.  He pulls a quarter from his pocket and flips it.  He commands the owner to guess.  “Heads.”  The answer is correct.  Chigurh hands the proprietor the coin and leaves.  He meets two men on the road.  They all go to the desert.  Chigurh takes the inspection plate from a truck.  It belongs to Moss.  Chigurh questions the men.  He shoots them both and leaves with a transponder receiver.

Bell reflects on being sheriff.  Moss says goodbye to his wife.  Bell is sent to a fire.  Moss’s truck is nearby.  Bell sinks into the shootout and chaos.  He decides to locate Moss and picks up Torbert.  Nine bodies were located.  Chigurh enters Moss’s trailer.  It is abandoned.  He takes the mail and calls numbers.  Nothing is gained.  Chigurh heads to the garage where Llewelyn works.  Moss hides the money in the air ducts in a cheap motel in Del Rio.  He crosses the border in Mexico and returns later.  He notices that someone was in his room.  The cab driver drops him off at another motel.  Moss buys a shotgun and watches the sunset.

Bell inspects Moss’s trailer.  The murders have made the news.  State and federal agencies arrive.  Moss returns to his first motel and books an adjacent room.  He fishes the money out of the vents and takes some.  Chigurh follows the transponder’s signal to the motel.  He shoots two people and finds dust marks in the vents.  Moss hails a cab to Eagle Pass and settles into a hotel.  He discovers the transponder in the money and hides under his bed with the shotgun.  A stranger creeps in.  Moss confronts him with the gun and flees.  Chigurh fires from the balcony and lands a shot.  Moss limps to Mexico and throws the money bag over the railing near the river and into the sugar cane.

Hired

Bell drives to Llewelyn’s wife.  She remains quite about her husband.  He gets a call and leaves for Eagle Pass.  No Country for Old Men switches to a Houston high-rise.  Wells is hired to track down Chigurh.  He is asked what he thinks.  Wells says he is a psychopath and goes to the Eagle Pass hotel.  He reviews the security feed and walks through rooms.  Moss wakes up to Wells near his hospital bed in Mexico.  Wells warns him about Chigurh and leaves him his number.  Moss thinks he can handle the killer himself.

Chigurh is injured and drives to a veterinary clinic.  He explodes a car before stealing drugs.  He tends to his leg and nurses himself in a motel for five days.  Bell continues to investigate.  The transponder receiver beeps.  Chigurh follows it back to Eagle pass.  He is certain Moss is dead and enters the hotel.  He finds the transponder and waits for Wells.  Wells pleads and offers money.  Chigurh says it is the wrong currency.  Time passes.  Wells is shot.  Chigurh searches his car.  His phone rings.  Bell returns to the scene and a dead Wells.

Chigurh takes the stairs to the office of the man who hired Wells.  He shoots him before the man fires his pistol and watches him die.  Moss’s wife leaves for El Paso with her mother.  Chigurh enters the mother’s home and spends the night.  Moss takes a cab to the get the briefcase.  He goes to San Antonio and buys a gun and truck.  Two men listen to a headset and write something down.  They leave with a submachine gun.  Moss and a hitchhiker stop for the night.  The two men go to a car wash to rinse the blood from their windows.  Bell arrives and identifies a mutilated Moss.  Chigurh finds the money.

The money is returned to a businessman who asks how Chigurh found him.  The psychopath does not answer and says he hopes they work together.  The businessman agrees.  Llewelyn’s wife is confronted by Chigurh.  A coin is flipped.  She guesses wrong and is shot.  The killer leaves and gets in a car wreck.  Bell visits his uncle and they swap war stories.  Time passes.  Bell fails to locate Chigurh.  He retires.  No Country for Old Men.