No Country for Old Men

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

This winner of the 2007 Best Picture Oscar, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, takes its title from the first line of William Butler Yeats’s poem, “Sailing to Byzantium.” Yeats was rejecting the biological forces in the natural world that cause aging, decay, and death, and instead was seeking refuge in the world of timeless art. This story, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel, focuses on the moral corruption pervading modern times that contributes to the decay and death of civilization. “Old men” can remember a time when ethical standards were high, and they bemoan how now, to quote another Yeats’s poem, “Things fall apart.”

The film is difficult to categorize. It has elements of a western, film noir, drama, and comedy. The movie begins with vistas of unpopulated West Texas prairie land in 1980. You get a sense of being on your own here, without much protection from others. There is no music. The opening soundtrack consists of the sound of insects buzzing or the wind blowing through the desolation of the present day. There is a voice-over, which establishes the theme of the film immediately, by Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), whose name may mean he is sounding a warning or that what he has to say rings true. He says how his father and grandfather were lawmen, so his family has been one that not only obeyed, but tried to enforce laws. He says that he liked stories about the old-timers, comparing himself to them, as they were the gold standard, and wonders how they would deal with current times, suggesting that now things have changed, probably for the worse. He notes that some of these past lawmen didn’t even carry guns, implying that respect for the law was that powerful. He provides an example of a current criminal. He arrested a boy, who eventually was executed, who killed a fourteen-year-old girl. The press said it was “a crime of passion.” But, the criminal told Bell it wasn’t, that he had planned on killing someone for a long time, and if set free, would do so again. The boy “said he knew he was going to hell,” but even that was no deterrent to this kind of murderer. Bell says he doesn’t know how to “measure” the horror of what is going on now. He admits he always knew he was putting himself in jeopardy in his job. He just didn’t want to “go out” for something he “didn’t understand,” and that is the kind of unfathomable crimes that he sees taking place today.

As if to give an example of such a crazy criminal in our midst, as Bell talks we have the scene where a lawman takes into custody a man named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, in a Best Supporting Actor performance), whose last name, ironically, sounds like “sugar.” He does not in any way have a sweet disposition. We see that he had with him an air tank with a nozzle, which he uses to break through doors, or kill people. We find out later the contraption shoots out and retracts a metal bolt, and is used to kill cattle. Possibly that is how this killer sees people, as animals to be slaughtered. At the policeman’s small office, the lawman talks to someone on the phone, and says the man in his custody uses an oxygen tank, maybe for emphysema, which shows how unprepared he is to deal with someone who is so evil. Behind him, Chigurh is able, almost supernaturally, to put his arms that are handcuffed behind him, in front of his body. He sneaks up behind the officer, and strangles him with the chain linking the cuffs. They are on the floor as the cop struggles. Chigurh looks like a bug-eyed demon, grimacing as he kills the man. After it’s over he looks totally unemotional, almost inhuman, like the white-haired killer in another film by the Coens, Fargo, or like a shark, whose only purpose is to destroy, as is described in the movie, Jaws. Chigurh gets the keys to remove the cuffs, and his wrists are bleeding, which he rinses off, seeming unfazed by the injury. He steals the officer’s police car, and uses it to pull over another car. The driver is an innocent who stops because he accepts on face value the authority of the police. Chigurh quietly, almost hypnotically, gets the man to stand still as he puts the nozzle to his head and kills him. It is ironic, as it is in Terminator 2, that the criminal is cloaked in the guise of the lawful enforcer, because the world has turned upside-down in terms of morality.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), whose relentless forward motion shows he gathers no “moss,” is hunting. He wounds a deer and tracks it after picking up his spent shell, which shows his meticulous nature. He comes across corpses that were the result of a shootout. There are four-wheel-drive vehicles there next to the bodies. A Mexican is still alive in a truck, asking for water, which Moss says he doesn’t have. He discovers one truck loaded with bags of drugs. Moss is smart, realizing there had to be one last man standing. He finds that fellow who made it out of the confrontation, but who died later next to a nearby tree. Close to the dead man is a suitcase filled with hundred-dollar bills. Moss takes the money in defiance of the fact that he knows people will be looking for such a large sum of cash. Moss is not a drug dealer, and is not a murderer, but he also breaks the law by taking the satchel full of money instead of alerting the authorities. He probably sees it as an opportunity to get ahead, since society has not rewarded him and his wife for all their years of hard work.

Some of the comic elements come out in the dialogue between Moss and his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald, who one would never guess from her Texas accent here that she is really Scottish). He goes back to his trailer home, and Carla Jean asks what’s in the satchel. He says money, knowing she will think he’s joking, and she says “That’ll be the day.” He also took the handgun of the man with the money, and she asks where did he “get” the pistol? Without revealing anything he humorously says, “At the gettin’ place.” When she says she won’t ask what he’s been doing all day, he also says comically, “that’ll work.”

Later, Moss can’t sleep, and then says out loud to himself, “Alright.” Carla Jean wants to know where he is going and he says to do something “dumber than hell.” He fills a plastic jug with water to give to the Mexican who asked for it in the truck. He says that if he doesn’t come back (he knows he could be getting himself killed) that Carla Jean should tell his mother that he loves her. She doesn’t understand since his mother is dead. He says, “Then I’ll tell her myself,” since he expects he may meet her in the afterlife. His sense of decency, ironically, is what undoes Moss, because it puts him in the sights of the psychotic killer, Chigurh. He goes back to the scene of the crime, and finds the man dead, so his humanitarian effort is wasted in this topsy-turvy world. He looks back up to where he parked his truck and sees another vehicle there. He is shot at and wounded as the Mexican drug dealers pursue him. Moss dives into a river and, after killing a Mexican attack dog, escapes.

What follows is an increasingly tense scene which reveals what kind of creature Chigurh is. We never learn about his background, which makes him more mysterious, more of a force than a person. He has a foreign accent, and his puffy shag hairstyle and clothes show he is different, alien to the surroundings. He has exotic weapons, including the air pressure tank and later a rifle with a silencer on it. He goes into a convenience store to pay for gas and buy a snack. The shopkeeper makes the mistake of asking him how the weather is from where he came, saying it looked like he was coming from Dallas. Chigurh, not wanting anyone to discover his actions, says menacingly what business is it of his where he came from. The shop guy is surprised because he was just making small talk. He realizes that this customer is dangerous. Chigurh makes fun of his accent, and calls him sarcastically “Friendo.” He also criticizes him for repeating questions. The shopkeeper, looking for a way out of this encounter, says he is closing now, and when asked when is closing time, he answers with “now.”  Chigurh, ramping up the confrontation, says “now” is not a time. After the shopkeeper says he goes to sleep around 9:30, Chigurh says he can come back then. It is a threat, which the owner can’t comprehend because there is no need for one. He instead asks the sensible question as to why come back when the store is closed. Chigurh puts down a squished snack wrapper and it crinkles open in a grating way so that even this small action adds to the tension of the scene. Chigurh gives him a chance to live or die through a coin toss. For Chigurh, life and death are ruled arbitrarily by chance, separate from human action. Morality does not factor into one’s fate, nor does logic, reason, or compassion. Chigurh says the man must call heads or tails, or else it wouldn’t be “fair” if Chigurh called it, like there is some rule that one’s fate must not be interfered with by another party, so its power can work freely. When the shopkeeper guesses that it reads heads, allowing him to escape death, Chigurh tells him not to put the lucky quarter into his pocket because then it will be like any other coin, but he adds “Which it is.” There is no logic or meaning in which to ground oneself in this modern world.

After returning home, Moss tells his wife to leave and go to her mother’s home because he knows that the men who were shooting at him will trace his abandoned truck to their address, and come looking for the two million dollars he took. Moss says once things are set in motion, there’s no stopping what follows, and that is what they now have to deal with. He is describing the domino effect, and in a way, even though events may have been caused by human action, what he describes is an inevitability of outcomes that mirrors what Chigurh believes.

Chigurh shows up at the shootout site and meets two other men with whom he supposedly is working. They work for the organization that was paying the Mexicans for the drugs. Chigurh pries the serial number plate off Moss’s truck, and gets a transponder from one of the men so he can track a homing device hidden in the money. Chigurh politely asks one of the men to hold a flashlight so he can see them better, and then shoots the other two. He’s eliminating anybody who can identify him, not showing allegiance to anyone else, not even to his own employer’s operatives.

Bell’s wife, Loretta (Tess Harper) is very protective of her husband, telling him as he goes to work to be careful, don’t get hurt, and don’t hurt anyone, which are tough restrictions if you’re a cop. Bell describes the sequence of events to his deputy, Wendell (Garret Dillahunt), involving the killing of the local lawman, including taking the patrol car, then killing the man on the road, and then taking his car, followed by torching it. Chigurh leaves a scorched earth trail behind him. He is a sort of devil figure, and fire is associated with hell. Wendell says that Bell has a “linear” way of doing his detective work. Bell offers that old age squashes a man, so in a way it wears him down, so he doesn’t have time to look in tangents. Bell’s logic is straightforward, which is the opposite of Chigurh’s. They come across the drug shootout and Bell recognize Moss’s truck. The drugs are gone, and Bell can tell just from the residue that it was “Mexican brown dope.” Wendell says the couple of guys that we know were killed by Chigurh were “managerial,” criminals as they were dressed in suits, and by the rate of body decompensation, there was more than one killing event. Wendell says what a mess (which echoes the first words Jones spoke in The Fugitive). Bell humorously uttering a sort of Texas witticism, says well if it’s not “it’ll do until the mess gets here,”

Chigurh tracked down where Moss lives from the truck’s serial number and goes to the trailer home. He uses the air tank to blow open the door. Framed in the doorway, he looks around and moves stiffly, expressionless, like a robot, and then calmly drinks milk. Indeed, he is like the android in The Terminator, never stopping in his quest, and not able to be stopped. He picks up a phone bill, so he has lists of people to call to track down where Moss may be. He goes to the trailer residential office and just keeps saying about Moss, “Where does he work?” Each time is more intimidating as the receptionist says she can’t give out the info. He probably would have been more forceful with her, but a toilet flushes, so he knows there are more people about, and he backs off. Is it an example of chance, like the coin toss, saving the woman’s life?

Moss traveled with his wife on a bus, but now gets off, as she is supposed to continue to travel to her mother’s home, while he tries to fight off his pursuers. There is more humor as she says she has a bad feeling about him leaving, but he says he has a good one, so it evens out. Carla Jean is truly worried about her husband. She argues her mom will be saying bad things about him for sending her there, but Moss says she’s used to that. She says she’s used to a lot of things, because she works at Walmart, implying her lot in life has not been too easy (The Coens said referring to Walmart gives the audience something everyone can relate to). Meanwhile, Bell and Wendell show up at the Moss trailer and Bell notes how the door lock was blown inward. When Wendell asks Bell if he thinks Moss has any idea what kind of person is hunting him, Bell, again displaying his quiet, folksy humor, says he ought to, because Moss has seen what Bell has, and “it certainly made an impression on me.” 

Moss goes to a motel in Del Rio, and uses the closet bar on which clothes are hung to push and hide the money bag in the air vent. Unlike Chigurh, he must improvise as he goes along, taking weapons at the shootout site, or buying them, and figuring out ways to hide his money. Chigurh calls people listed on the phone bill to track down Moss. While driving, Chigurh takes a shot at a bird sitting on a bridge, which shows how randomly nasty he can be. Moss is cautious when he sees a truck parked at the motel, and makes the cab driver take him away from the motel lot. Wendell says the report concerning the death of the man on the road with a forehead entry, but no exit, wound shows there was no bullet, which baffles Bell. It’s like the world is finding new ways to kill people, which refers back to what Bell already said about not wanting to go out being unable to understand what he was fighting. As a precaution, Moss gets another room at the motel to throw off people looking for him. He invents a new way to push the money satchel around in the vent by buying tent poles and taping hanger ends to them. Chigurh’s detector alerts him to the money’s whereabouts. He stops at the motel, then walks around without boots so he can be quiet. He carries the air tank and the rifle with its attached silencer. He goes into Moss’s previous room, finds three Mexicans there,  and kills them. Moss hears the guns of the Mexicans going off, pulls out the money and leaves, hitchhiking along the way. Chigurh again looks robotic, sitting down on the bed in the room with the corpses of the Mexicans around him, and slowly takes off his socks (because there is blood on them?) He is smart enough to check out the air vent and sees the scratches on the vent lining where the satchel was placed.

Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) shows up at the business office of the drug buyers. Wells also has a sense of humor. He takes a seat and the businessman (Stephen Root) says he didn't ask him to sit down. Wells humorously says that the employer didn’t look like a man who would waste a chair. He also makes a joke about validating his parking, and that the thirteenth floor is missing. The businessman says that they are missing their money, and the Mexicans are out their “product.” (It’s possible Chigurh took it). The businessman says Chigurh, (whom he hired), is a loose cannon, so he called in Wells, who knows the killer, to try and control him. When the businessman asks Wells how dangerous is Chigurh, we realize that this man has no concept of how reckless it was to use a man he didn’t understand. Wells says basically that you can’t compare Chigurh to the damage done by humans, but might be better measuring him against the “bubonic plague.”

Moss checks into a hotel and as he rests in his bed, he says there is just no way he could have been followed. He is intelligent enough to realize the money has a tracking device on it. He looks through the bills and finds the signaling beacon. He calls down to the desk, but there is no answer, so he concludes that whoever is after him has arrived. But why doesn’t he just break the transponder or throw it out the window? Instead his overconfidence allows him to take out his sawed-off shotgun and wait for the attack. He sees a shadow under the door and cocks his rifle. It’s possible Chigurh heard the weapon cocking. He proceeds down the hall and the lights go out so Moss can’t see Chigurh near the room. He uses the air tank to blow the lock, and it hits Moss, delivering another shoulder wound. He gets off a shotgun blast and goes out through the window. Moss hitches a ride on a truck, but Chigurh shoots and kills the driver. As Chigurh continues to fire, Moss runs the truck into parked cars and hides behind another vehicle. When Chigurh shows up, Moss starts shooting at him near some parked cars. Chigurh runs off, but Moss sees he hit the man because there is a blood trail.

Chigurh is limping from his leg wound and there are blood stains on his pants. He cuts a piece of cloth, pushes it into a gas-cap opening on a car, and sets the material on fire. (Again, there is the association with hellfire). For him, it doesn’t matter who or what is destroyed as he continues on his path. He walks into a pharmacy without a reaction as the car explodes as a distraction for him to get medical supplies to treat his injury. He cleans the wound, anesthetizes it, and bandages it. His relentless pursuit of Moss is mirrored by Moss’s drive to fight to retain the money. Another way in which the two reflect each other is that they are both seen tending to their wounds in this battle between a sort of anti-hero and the evildoer.

Moss is suffering as he heads to the Mexican border. He encounters three boys and says he will give one of them five hundred dollars for his coat. Even these young guys are mercenaries, as they want to charge him for a bottle of beer, too. Moss uses the coat to cover his injuries and holds the beer to make it look like his weak appearance is due to drinking. He tosses the money bag over a low bridge to temporarily hide it. He wakes on the street the next day to musicians playing a song that has the lines (according to IMDb) “you wanted too much wealth, you wanted to play with fire.” The words fit in with Moss’s zeal for the cash, and his thinking he was adept enough to overcome attempts to stop him, which led to his confrontation with the fire-wielding devil, Chigurh. Moss winds up in a Mexican hospital. Wells shows up there, being funny by bringing a bunch of flowers. He is impressed that Moss saw Chigurh and is still alive. Wells insightfully tells Moss that he isn’t cut out for this type of life. Moss may see himself as being tough, but he is not naturally mean, which was shown by how he brought water to the shootout victim. Wells says that it only took him three hours to locate Moss, so Chigurh will find him. Wells says Chigurh may be on his way to Odessa to kill Carla Jean. He urges Moss to give him the money, and he may be able to give Moss a cut from it. Moss says he might be able to make a better deal with Chigurh. Wells says he can’t because even if Moss gave him the money, Chigurh would kill him just for inconveniencing him. Wells says Chigurh has some peculiar principles that govern his behavior, that “transcend” drugs or money. He’s says he’s not like either of them. Despite his physical condition, Moss can still be funny when he tells Wells that he has to give Chigurh points for not talking as much as Wells. Wells tells him the hotel he is at and to call him.

Bell goes to Odessa and meets with Moss’s wife, knowing she would go to her mother’s house. She tells him that she hasn’t heard from Moss and doesn’t know where he is right now. Bell says that the men looking for her husband won’t stop and will kill him. She says her husband is a relentless man. What we see is that when these self-righteous types clash, there is little room for reason or compromise. Bell interestingly tells her a story about a rancher who tried to slaughter a steer, and it went wrong, and the rancher was wounded by his own bullet that ricocheted. His point is that even between man and steer, how things will turn out is not certain. But he mentions how the steer was hit in the head first, and that makes him think about how they kill steers with air pressure and a bolt that hits the animal in the head. He begins to realize that is the instrument that the killer uses.

Wells traces Moss’s steps and sees the satchel in the high grass off of the bridge. As Wells goes up the stairs at the hotel to his room, he is followed by Chigurh who smilingly says they’ll go to his room. Wells tells him there is no need to kill him. He knows where the money is, and he can get him $14,000 from an ATM. Chigurh smiles while repeating “An ATM.” It’s like he finds Wells’s talk a curiosity, since what he has to say doesn’t matter to him. Wells tells him that the satchel can be there in twenty minutes. Chigurh wants things to play out the way he sees it should happen, with him as fate’s instrument, and says the money will be brought to him and laid at his feet, presumably by Moss. And, he questions Wells for his way of living, since it brought him here, to this end. Chigurh tells him he should accept his fate, because it would be more dignified, since it is pointless to fight against his destiny. Wells tells him to go to hell and asks him if he knows how crazy he is. The phone rings, and Chigurh shoots Wells, probably for interfering in his mission. He takes the call. It is Moss, maybe ready to make a safe deal with Wells? Chigurh talks to him as Wells’s blood starts to flow toward him. He simply lifts his legs, his only concern being not to stain his shoes, the way he took his socks off after killing the Mexicans, and closing the shower curtain as he shot one of them so as not get splatter on him. Chigurh says he knows the hospital where Moss is, but that he is not going there. Instead, he lets Moss realize that he is going to visit Carla Jean. If Moss brings him the money, he will spare her, but not him. Otherwise, his wife is just as responsible for what has happened, in the world according to Chigurh. Moss says he’s got something for him, and we know it’s not the money.

Deputy Wendell tells Bell that the lock was punched out at the hotel where the Mexicans were killed. Bell is reading the newspaper and says that it seems to be all out war with people these days. He says that there is a story about a couple who kidnapped old people and collected their Social Security checks, but also tortured and killed them, and later buried them in the yard. His dark humor shows when he says, “I don’t know why. Maybe the television set was broke.” Bells says one captive got out wearing a dog collar, and that caught the attention of a neighbor. Bell wonders why then, since seeing the burying of bodies in the yard didn’t seem curious. The deputy laughs at the dark joke. Bell says it’s okay to laugh, because he does so too occasionally. “Ain’t a whole lot else you can do,” he observes. Sometimes this old man uses humor to stop becoming engulfed by the modern world’s pervasive sadness.

Moss leaves the hospital and retrieves the money. He calls his wife who knows him so well that she can tell by his voice that he is hurt. He wants her to meet him in El Paso so Chigurh won’t get to her. Carla Jean’s mother (Beth Grant) in heard in the background. She has a big mouth and always complains. Chigurh shows up at the office of the businessman who hired him, but because he hired Wells and gave the Mexicans a tracking device to find the money, he shoots him. There is an accountant there who is scared. The accountant says that the boss felt that it would be better to have more people looking for the cash, but Chigurh interrupts saying that was a wrong move. “You find the one right tool,” he says, which is him, to do fate’s job. Despite Wells saying that he has no sense of humor, Chigurh does have a sort of scary one. The accountant asks if he is going to shoot him. He tells the accountant it depends. He asks, “Do you see me?” So, the answer is obviously yes, we know he will kill the accountant for just being there and later being able to identify Chigurh as a killer.

Because the Mexicans have also been recruited despite the falling out at the shootout, they follow Carla Jean and her mom as they get ready to go to El Paso. The mother complains about how hot it is, that she doesn’t know anybody in El Paso, and can’t find her medication. One of the Mexicans, looking smartly dressed and acting polite, helps the mother with her bags, and he gets her to say where they are headed. Meanwhile, Carla Jean reconsiders Bell’s help, and calls him, realizing her husband has gotten in over his head. She tells Bell where to locate Moss.

As Chigurh kills another innocent, a nice fellow, to acquire his truck, and has concluded that Moss will want his wife on a plane, he heads to the nearest city that has an airport, which is El Paso. Moss is already at a motel near the airport. There is a woman there who is coming onto him saying that she has beer in her room. He says he’s waiting for his wife, letting her know that he isn’t available. She asks is that who he looks for out of his window. He says partly, but he says he’s looking for “what’s coming.” She rightly says you never can see that, which turns out to be a foreshadowing, as the Mexicans arrive later and kill Moss. The Coens did not want to be predictable, so they made the unorthodox move of killing off the main character, and not letting him confront his pursuer. In the end, it was Moss’s hubris that was his undoing because it made him think he could beat the experienced, immoral criminals.

The next shot is of Bell arriving at the El Paso motel just as the Mexicans are leaving as they shoot up the place. Bell is just a little late which adds to the sorrow of the situation. Carla Jean arrives that night and her cries add weight to the sad situation. Bell meets with the local Sheriff (Rodger Boyce). These are two of the “old men” of the title. The Mexicans found and took the money. The Sheriff says it’s the drugs and greed that is multiplying, and complains it probably has its start with young people’s extreme altering of their appearances. Bell says “once you quit hearing ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am,’ the rest is soon to foller.” For them, it is the downhill road of a decaying society that has no respect for law or civility. “It’s the dismal tide,” says the Sheriff. Bell listens as the other man says how the killer returned to the scene of the crime, as he killed the desk clerk where Moss stayed and then went back and killed Wells. (Moss returned to the shootout scene, but unlike Chigurh, was doing a good deed by bringing a hurt man water). The Sheriff’s observation gives Bell the idea to go back to the motel in case Chigurh is there, having missed his opportunity to look for the cash because of the Mexicans.  Back at the motel, Bell hesitates, trying to convince himself that he should risk going there, since it goes against what he said earlier about sacrificing himself dealing with a criminal he can’t comprehend. He sees the door lock was blown open as before. Chigurh is there, listening, but he was able to get out of the room through the unlocked bathroom window. Bell sees that the air vent grate is off, as Chigurh was looking to see if the money was stashed inside.

Bell visits an old lawman, Ellis (Barry Corbin), who is the male version of a cat woman, with kitties all over the place. His house is falling apart, symbolic of the man, maybe the country. They talk about how Bell is ready to retire. Ellis was shot and is in a wheelchair. Bell asks what would have happened if the guy who shot Ellis hadn’t died in prison and was released. Ellis says that if you spend too much time trying to get back what you lost, you miss how much more is going out the door. After a while you have to put a “tourniquet” on it, he says. This old man is philosophical, and has reconciled himself to the way things are or else he will lose all sense of well-being. Bell says he wants to retire because he feels “overmatched,” and that’s why he’s quitting. Ellis says that what Bell is seeing really isn’t new. But, Bell says he thought that God would come into his life as he got older, but He didn’t.” Ellis says, “This country is hard on people.” He says, “You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t waiting on you. That’s vanity,” to think that one has that much of an impact on things in the bigger picture.

Carla Jean’s mother passed away, and after the funeral, she goes back to her mother’s house, sees the window open, and finds Chigurh there. She says she doesn’t have the money, only bills. With his deadly humor, he says “I wouldn’t worry about it,” implying she won’t be living long enough to have to deal with money problems. He gave his word to Moss that she would die if he didn’t give him the cash, so he must follow through with his vow. He says that Moss had the opportunity to save her, but didn’t, and tried to save himself. She says that’s not the way it was, since she knows that he wanted to save both of them. But, in the end, her husband’s refusal to at least go to the police led to his demise, and now hers. Chigurh only sees things from his perspective, that he is the inevitability that should have been respected. He has no cause to kill her, but he must because of his code, warped as it is, which gives him meaning. He gives her the coin toss option, but she will not surrender to arbitrary chance, even though it means she will die. She feels as if she at least is making the choice. He says people always say, “You don’t have to do this,” but he laughs because he feels that it is out of his hands. She says, “The coin don’t have no say. It’s just you.” He is upset that she won’t “call it,” because she is refuting his belief system. He says, “I got here the same way the coin did,” which associates himself with fate, not his own free will.

He leaves the house, looking at his shoes, which means he is probably seeing, as he did before, if blood has stained them. He drives off looking at two boys on bikes close to his car. He is then T-boned by another vehicle, which adds stress to the motel woman’s words about not seeing what’s coming. He, too, is subject to outside forces. But, he survives, again showing to be like fate’s Terminator. He asks for a kid’s shirt to use as a sling for his broken arm. He pays for clothing to deal with his wound, just as Moss did, linking them as stubbornly persistent men on a mission no matter the consequences. He gives one of the boys money, and says “you didn't see me.” The boys quibble over the money, showing here, too, the next generation is carrying forward the country’s corruption with its wallowing in greed.

Bell is retired now. He tells his wife that he had two dreams about his dad, who was younger than Bell is now. It was in past times, though. He says that he and his father were riding in the darkness and the air was cold. His dad rode on ahead of him, ready to make a fire for his son when he reached him. These appear to be nostalgic thoughts about how his father gave him protection from danger, but also possibly about how he will see him again when he dies, which is another form of comfort that helps one escape the hardness of this life.

The next film, after a break for the Thanksgiving holiday, is The Conversation.