What is with the ending of "No Country for Old Men"?!
Question: I watched it last night and it was pretty good. The blurb on the back of the DVD said it was a riveting thriller right up to the "heartstopping" end. There was nothing heartstopping about it though. Did I miss something or was that just the end?
Answers: I watched it last night and it was pretty good. The blurb on the back of the DVD said it was a riveting thriller right up to the "heartstopping" end. There was nothing heartstopping about it though. Did I miss something or was that just the end?
The last few scenes in the movie really sum up the movie's intent: I think that Sheriff Bell realizes that crime (evil) in our society will always be among us. A lawman (like himself and his father and his grandfather) can spend his (or her) whole life chasing "the bad guys" across the desert, in the dark and the cold until they are old and worn out, and then they must concede to a younger, more energetic and savvy police team to step in. That's how most crimes are effectively solved--even back 20-some years ago when this story supposedly took place. Remember when Bell's friend Ellis asks Bell, "Why are you quittin'?" Bell says, "I feel over-matched". In other words, he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart. Ellis replies: "This country is hard on people. Can't stop what's comin'. It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity." Again, the idea is that Bell is too old for the job at hand, i.e., fighting unstoppable evil and feeling that he should still be chasing Chigurh. Thus, the title: "No country for old men"--a line taken from a Yeates poem, published in 1928. Too, after all that hard effort and years of pursuing the criminals, the bad guys will sometimes simply walk away and never be caught. Evil will rise up again and again. That discouraging fact just has to be accepted. It looked as if Anton Chigurh was able to get up and walk away again, only to be pursued another day.
This is one of those rare movies in which the ending is not tied up with a neat little bow. I thought it was a really good movie--maybe not worthy of Best Picture. But try watching it again--now that you MAY have better insight into the overall message the Cohen brothers were trying to convey.
I had the same question....it was an amazing, if amazingly violent, movie.
Oftentimes reviews aren't always EXACTLY matching with that EVERYONE thinks of the movie.
Quite surprising ending, the car crash, Chigurh killing the wife...
I didn't really like the movie much less the ending. In the end he ends up killing the girl. It seemed really bland and pointless and was just a story of an obnoxious serial killer. I don't think it had that great of a story line either
However I do bet there are already tons of people killing with cattle prods now
ther is some thing wrong at why go back and get a new one i say
My wife and I saw it and we were both thinking, "What ending?"
We were very disappointed.
I liked the ending. There wasn't going to be a show down between Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem. About the ending - sometimes, that is how things go in life - it just cuts off.
Apparently the Coen brothers are known for doing things like this. Eh, I too was surprised but I loved the movie up until Tommy Lee starts telling the story about the dream, so in essence I loved everything but the ending. It was disappointing indeed.