The Big Picture

  • No Country for Old Men explores the perils of a lawless desert, where violence and dread rule all.
  • Sheriff Bell is left questioning his place in this new world, as morally dubious characters like Chigurh challenge his sense of justice.
  • The film highlights the growing nature of violence in men and the bleak reality that awaits future generations.

The vast and open space of a hot desert drives the moral and ethical emotions of the men who inhabit these spaces. Ethan and Joel Coen’s No Country for Old Men is about the perils of a lawless land, where violence and dread rule all. It is also about the passing of time, and the men left behind in the wake of all its violent changes, like Tommy Lee Jones’s Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Bell comes from a long line of law enforcement officers in his family. The events that transpire throughout the film trigger Bell to question his place in this new world. A world that yields morally dubious characters like hitman Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem in an Oscar-winning performance. Men like Chigurh have moral codes that extend farther than that of a Mexican drug cartel and Sheriff Bell.

no-country-for-old-men-poster
No Country for Old Men

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande.

Release Date
November 8, 2007
Director
Ethan Coen , Joel Coen
Runtime
122 Minutes
Main Genre
Crime
Writers
Joel Coen , Ethan Coen , Cormac McCarthy
Tagline
There are no clean getaways

What Happens to Tommy Lee Jones' Bell in 'No Country for Old Men'?

At the end of the film, Bell is a retired sheriff who speculates about the future of law enforcement and the world in general. After spending the better part of the film chasing after Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss and Chigurh in the wake of their violent cat-and-mouse game, Bell is always just one step too far from ever catching up to them. After stumbling on a Mexican drug cartel deal gone wrong, Moss comes across a large sum of money. Instead of going to the authorities, Moss listens to his greed and takes it. Chigurh goes after Moss to retrieve the money, and so begins the chase. Bell, always arriving too late, ends up becoming what he most feared: dispensable. Chigurh escapes, Moss dies, and the fate of Moss’s wife is left ambiguous.

This becomes the motif of Bell’s final monologue of the film, where age and the world’s ever-changing circumstances catch up to him. It’s a recall of his first few lines, where Bell mentions to his young deputy that they wouldn’t even need to carry guns when his father was a sheriff. That’s no longer the case. Sitting in his home, Bell recounts two of his dreams from last night to his wife. Having retired already, Bell contemplates these fears of the future through these two dreams. In one vision, he remembers losing money his father had given him. In the other, he and his father were riding through a snowy mountain path. His father had gone ahead to make a fire in the darkness and wait for Bell.

What Is the Meaning Behind Bell's Dreams?

A close-up of Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Bell in No Country For Old Men
Image via Paramount Pictures

Why end the film with dreams? Because dreams are often memories wrapped in metaphors and feelings. Losing the money his father gave him only reinforces the idea that Bell feels at a loss. He feels like he didn’t live up to his father’s expectations of him, or that he didn’t live up to the family legacy in law enforcement. Bell decided to shoulder the brunt of the precarious and violent world around him because he felt he could’ve done more. An entire legacy behind him, and he feels like it died right then and there with him. The second dream is more of absolution for him. A moment of reconciliation between him, and his father, and the end of this legacy he values. Waiting for him in the darkness but keeping that one light on symbolizes Bell’s return home. The return of the prodigal son who’s spent years working to leave the world in a better place than he found it.

Amid its ambiguity, the ending of No Country for Old Men is the one part that remains as clear as its title. It’s about the passing of time and generational change. It’s about the growing nature of violence within the men who claim these spaces. It’s no coincidence that these three men were the central focus of the film’s narrative, where each of them represented the past, present, and future of these lands. These lands are overcome by their masculinity and need to uphold their own destructive and self-serving nature. Whether it’s Moss's willingness to risk the life of his wife for money or Chigurh’s cold and callous nature, No Country for Old Men is an escalation of men’s inherent propensity for self-gratification and selfish violence.

'No Country for Old Men' Doesn't Offer a Typical Hollywood Ending

In its final shots, Jones’s Sheriff Bell becomes the voice of generations past. As the camera pans ever so slowly into a close shot of his face, his facial expression begins to fall and falter. Almost to the point of tears, Bell becomes a point of revelation for the audience. This is the reality that awaits the future of men in No Country for Old Men. Men like Chigurh. That carries some distorted sense of moral code that masks the sadistic nature of humanity. Of the need to kill or be killed. Or of Moss. The prospect of money and fortune so easily sways men like Moss that they’re willing to lose life and limb for it. Then, there are men like Bell. Men who thought they’d done everything right their entire life only to find out things have only gotten worse.

That is the true meaning behind No Country for Old Men’s final scene. The moment of cold water hitting someone’s body in the middle of winter. Where the chill stings so bad, it leaves anyone suspended in time. That’s what that monologue does. It stops its audience in sheer disbelief that this is how it ends. It makes that final cut all the more jarring. There is no resolution. There is no comfort in what’s transpired over the past two hours. There is no promise of the sun rising once again. It’s just the words of a broken man who has borne witness to so much violence in a couple of days before his retirement that even he can’t offer any solace. What else is there left to say but that of the dreams of a broken man? In following these characters, it’s like ending up back in square one, only with the realization that things aren’t going to get better; that things seem only to get worse.

No Country for Old Men is available to stream in the U.S. on Showtime.

Watch on Showtime