FAQ for
No Country for Old Men (2007) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags are used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

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 suggests that Chigurh was caught trying to sneak into the country.

In the book, Chigurh told Wells that he had allowed himself to 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 June 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.

There are a variety of reasons for which Chigurh could have killed The Managerials.

Initially it might have appeared as if Chigurh killed them in order to double-cross his employer. It is likely that this was what The Man Who Hired Wells thought was happening, causing him to declare that Chigurh had gone rogue and to hire Wells to clean up. Events later on in the movie all but discount this as a possibility, especially at such an early stage. Chigurh apparently takes his job very seriously and it may be that he felt they did not share that same level of professionalism. Later on we discover that Chigurh doesn't like to work with others at all when he says to The Accountant, "You pick the one right tool." This makes it seem that this was the main reason he killed the Managerials. He had been hired to do a job and did not expect anybody else to be given the same job.

Another motive of Chigurh may have been his desire to swap out his car for their truck.

The "Mind ridin' bitch?" comment and their general attitude also did not improve their chances of staying on Chigurh's good side.

The three Mexicans at the Del Rio motel may have been hired by The Man Who Hires Wells (Stephen Root) (as well as Chigurh). Another possibility is that they are from the drug side of the deal-gone-bad. The Man Who Hires Wells mentions that the other side is "out their product", implying that the drugs were also reported as taken by a third party (whether they actually were or not is unknown). Because of this it is possible that the three Mexicans are from the drug side of the deal and The Man Who Hired Wells gave them a transponder to assuage their employer, the drug side, who was apparently unhappy with the way the deal went down. They used this transponder to find Moss' motel room and incorrectly assumed that the satchel was somewhere inside the room, when in fact it was a few yards away in the ventilation duct between rooms. It is not known for certain which party the Mexicans represent, only that they were given a transponder at some point by The Man Who Hired Wells. This is explained in the conversation between Chigurh and the Accountant. The Accountant does not explain the Mexicans' affiliation, only that The Man Who Hired Wells felt that the money would be found faster with more people looking for it. This makes it likely that he hired them to find the money, but that is not necessarily the case.

Carson Wells was hired by the man who also apparently hired Chigurh (The Man Who Hired Wells, Stephen Root) to kill Chigurh and retrieve the money, as Chigurh had been hired to do originally. The Man Who Hired Wells declares that Chigurh has gone rogue, which means he either thought Chigurh had or was in the process of double crossing him, or that he simply did not approve of Chigurh's methods. He hires Wells to clean up the situation.

Wells' exact profession is unknown. He claims he is merely a "day trader," implying that he may moonlight as a hitman/bounty hunter/mercenary, or just do it in his free time, whereas it seems to be Chigurh's full time profession. However, this may have just been self-depreciation in order to humble himself to Chigurh in the hopes that he might be spared. This means we cannot know his actual profession for sure, but it is safe to assume that he was contracted in a way similar to Chigurh and so both probably have the same occupation. Late in the film, he is referred to as a retired colonel.

The movie does indicate that Wells is highly intelligent, observant and alert, however, this is not enough to save him from Chigurh. Wells also seems to be cocky and overconfident, and Chigurh is able to get the jump on him.

Chigurh killed The Man Who Hired Wells (Stephen Root) because he had tasked people other than Chigurh with finding the money, including one (Carson Wells, Woody Harrelson) that was hired to kill him (Chigurh). Chigurh saw these people as an unnecessary inconvenience and so he eliminated them as they were encountered, starting with the managerials out in the desert at night.

The last straw for Chigurh is when he finds that Wells has been hired to kill him. Interestingly, after killing The Man Who Hired Wells, Chigurh only mentions that a transponder was given to the Mexicans from Moss' first motel room and nothing about the fact that somebody had been hired to kill him. When the accountant explains why the Mexicans also received a transponder, Chigurh says, "That's foolish. You pick the one right tool," implying that The Man Who Hired Wells had brought this on himself by tasking others with finding the money, instead of relying on Chigurh alone. Despite his reasons given, it is likely that the main reason that Chigurh decided to kill The Man Who Hired Wells had to do with the fact that he hired Wells.

It is left ambiguous as to whether or not Chigurh killed The Accountant. When the accountant asks if Chigurh is going to shoot him, Chigurh replies by saying, "That depends. Do you see me?" This implies that if The Accountant agrees to stay quiet that Chigurh will not kill him.

Some say that the obvious literal question to the answer would be "yes" and so Chigurh killed The Accountant, since he was a witness to the murder of The Man Who Hired Wells. This interpretation may be problematic, since Chigurh answers The Accountant's original question with a conditional, implying two possible options. Chigurh says, "That depends." which would be a hint to The Accountant about how he can avoid being shot. If Chigurh intended to kill The Accountant either way, then his statement no longer makes sense.

It cannot be confirmed one way or the other, but it is likely that The Accountant was not killed.

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.

It is open to interpretation and speculation regarding the exact nature of the closest thing to an encounter between Chigurh and Bell in the movie.

There are at least four possibilities:

The first is that Chigurh is indeed behind the door when we (and Bell) see what looks like his reflection through the lock tube. Bell draws his weapon and some time passes as he prepares himself to enter under the assumption that Chigurh is still inside. This may have given Chigurh some time to hide somewhere in the motel room. When Bell does enter, Chigurh is no longer behind the door (Bell doesn't even check there, although he does push the door open enough that if Chigurh were there he would probably know it). Bell checks the bathroom and finds the rear window locked. He then returns to the main room and sits down on the bed. He soon sees that the vent has been removed, implying that the money is gone and that Chigurh has it. During the time that Bell was in the bathroom it is possible that Chigurh left the room and escaped. Since Chigurh has the money he has no reason to go out of his way to kill Bell, and it is possible that he simply did the practical thing and escaped to avoid any further complications.

The second and third possibilities are similar but still distinct. They would be (2) that Chigurh is either in an adjacent room (the one to the left as we face the rooms as Bell walks towards them, for example) when we see him hiding behind the door or (3) that we see him hiding behind the door earlier in time by several minutes, being cautious about exiting the room. The first would make sense considering Moss' earlier method of hiding the money and making it accessible from another room. The second would fit with the usual situation of Bell arriving moments too late to find Chigurh, which is one of the reasons he says that he might call him a "ghost."

The fourth possibility is that Chigurh is already long gone and the reflection in the lock tube and the image of Chigurh waiting behind the door are all in Bell's imagination as expressions of his fear, the fear that he confronts (or attempts to confront) by entering the room anyway.

Because we know that Chigurh was indeed there at some point, we could consider a combination of either possibility 2 or 3 combined with 4 as being what actually happened or what we are being shown. This would mean that we aren't seeing something that is purely Bell's imagination (although what we see may have been influenced by it), but instead what actually happened "5 minutes ago" or "in the next room over" might be shown to illustrate what Bell is feeling: that Chigurh is somewhere around and that he will be in danger upon entering the room. In other words, there was some trick editing where we are being shown a different time or a different place interlaced with the current time and/or location in such a way that makes it appear to be happening concurrently to the scenes with Bell. Other movies use this technique to fool the audience into thinking two things are happening in the movie at the same time in the same place, when in reality one has already happened or happened in a different place, or both (eg. The Silence of the Lambs).

In the end, it matters little where Chigurh was (which is one of the reasons it was left ambiguous). What is important is that we are shown that Bell thinks he is still in there and enters the room anyway, confronting his fear and possibly putting his soul at hazard. Once again he is too late and Chigurh is gone with the money, but he didn't know that before he entered the room.

This matches closely the description of the scene from the book. The scene has been changed but the end result is basically the same.

In the book it is clearly stated to the reader that Chigurh is still at the motel when Bell arrives. Chigurh is in the parking lot, notices a car coming and hides in his car as he watches Bell park and go inside the motel room. After Bell has finished searching the motel room he prepares to exit to the room, and we "hear" what he is thinking. Just as he is about to exit the room he indicates that he is aware that Chigurh could be in one of the many cars in the parking lot, and that he would be helpless if Chigurh were to open fire on him from that vantage point. He exits the room anyway, gets in his car and drives down the road, and waits watching the parking lot. He has called for backup and he waits until backup arrives, and when they do a search of the parking lot returns nothing. The reader doesn't know how Chigurh escapes.

Although it is left open for interpretation, it is implied that Anton Chigurh wound up with the money, as he arrived too late and wasn't part of the El Paso motel shootout. 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. (NOTE: In the book, she does eventually call the coin toss and when it is incorrect, he shoots her.)

The two dreams can be seen as expressions of what Bell is struggling with throughout the course of the story and the change of perspective that allows him to come to terms with his struggle.

In the first dream he says his father entrusted him with some money, but he (Bell) lost it. This can be seen as Bell feeling as if he was entrusted with a responsibility and has failed to uphold it. His failure to keep and protect something valuable like the money is analogous to his failure as a law enforcement officer to protect people like Moss and Carla Jean, other civilians, and to make a significant impact on crime in general. This dream explains what is troubling him and that he feels or is afraid that he may be a failure. Because his father is mentioned explicitly it is likely that he may feel he has failed his father, who was also a law-man, on a personal level.

The second dream is a reconciliation of the problem from 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.

This indicates that Bell realizes that his father is waiting for him nonetheless, whether he is a failure or not. The dark and cold would represent the real world and the fire represents comfort, protection and hope. His father carries it onward, and Bell knows he will be waiting with it for him when he gets there himself. The dream seems to be an acknowledgement of the state of the world and bleak reality. Bell cannot change that state or leave it just as his father was also unable to do. But he is able to take comfort in knowin that his father is waiting there for him with a source of comfort, a source of light and heat in all that dark and cold.

The second dream indicates that Bell has come to a realization, at least on some level, of the concept that Ellis spoke of in their earlier conversation. Ellis says, "Whatcha got ain't nothin new. This country's hard on people, you can't stop what's coming, it ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity.", meaning that Bell can not expect himself to succeed at the standard he has held himself to, and so it is unreasonable to do so. Bell felt compelled to continue on past a reasonable age and into unmanagable situations in order to uphold the responsibility he felt had been passed down to him. When he realizes he can't do this he feels overmatched and quits by retiring. He had tasked himself with the impossible (in an attempt to live up to his father, or previous law-men, etc.) and blamed himself for failing to succeed. Bell may not realize it consciously yet, but the dreams show that on some level after his talk with Ellis he realized that the world had always been this way and always would be (dark and cold) but that there are sources of refuge and comfort waiting for him.