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Actually, I don't think we were set up for a showdown.

Posted by Harmonia on November 30, 2007 at 20:44:57:

Au contraire.

Even though it was the Coens and McCarthy, you presumed a more conventional thriller structure than was actually there. We would ordinarily assume that with such sharply drawn characters there was gonna be a face-off between Tommy's Sherriff Bell and Javier's assasin Chigurg. We coulda been right...if they were doing a Blood Simple... but neither they nor we were in that country this time.

NCFOM wasn't headin' that direction and the filmmakers told us that from the git go. You notice all the dead dogs in close-up in the first reel??? They weren't there for set dressing. All those stories about Uncle so 'n so getting shot and the feller havin' the bullet bounce of the skull of a steer he was tryin' to slaughter and cripple hisself for life? I mean...did you think this stuff was just color? Did you think the flick was about Llewelyn's heist? Think about the title.

Neither the Coens nor (especially) Cormac McCarthy were too interested in tying up loose ends. Note that TLJ never interacted directly with the other main protagonists until the El Paso motel, where he and Bardem pass like ships in the night. Dead giveaway. (Pun intended.)

Yup, in the land where the landscape alone can freeze men hearts, this movie is about bad choices, but especially about Fate And Men's Souls.

Greed made Moss stupid, even though he was smart and resourceful, and that once mistake rippled ever outward through the film. Woody's character had all the bravado and confidence of experience, and the blessing of dubious morals. But look where that got him. Poor Sherriff Bell has had enough of bad juju but it's seeped into his bones, it's a part of him and he can't escape it. Looking at dear old dad, it's probably in his DNA, in the Bell lawmen like dark eyes and receding hairlines. The implacable Chigurh, ever resourceful and indominatable, stripped of conscience and with no recognizable humanity to deter him from his goals continues to cut his swathe through baddies and innocents alike. Bell & Chigurh glance off each other but only Sherriff Bell lives with that encountrt. This old world is big enough, and cold enough, to excompass them both, much to the Bell lawmen's sorrow.

This adaptation was pretty faithful to the book (maybe too faithful, too literary for some), and though we might wish for a different resolution, that would be another movie. We were definitely in McCarthyland, which is no bad place to be. But I'm sure you weren't alone in wishing there we'd been more Coen Country, a place with less "Poetry" and a bigger finishes.

PS: about your spoiler, the truck was bouncing up and down, it was dark and the target was zig zagging. Didn't ruin it for me. And the dog attack was an editing marvel.