November
27 No Country for Old Men: That Pesky Ending

Call me a luddite, but I HATED the ending. I was put through the winger during the first 100 minutes on the edge of my seat during No Country convinced that I was seeing the best film of the year only to have the rug pulled out from under me. Afterwards I only wished that Joel Silver had produced the film. He would have given me the ending I wanted that the film was leading up to.

Also, the basic rule of screenwriting is to give information to the audience as much as possible visually, not by words. Show me, don't tell me. The last 20 minutes of the film we are constantly told what a mean, cruel, violent, cynical world we live in, in which evil sometimes win. Well like DUH!!!! For the first 100 minutes of the film that's what we plainly see. We don't need to be told again.

However, if it's any compensation, I really love Atonement which is up there for me as one of the best films I've seen this year. Another film without a happy ending or clear resolution

The ending was a limp-wristed attempt at "art" that just fizzled after a great buildup.
What a waste of $8.
Next time you want a violent film about life on the Tex-Mex border, dial up Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH. At least old Sam knew how to finish the job.
Double raspberries for this fizzle job. I want my money back.

Don't believe the hype.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/no-country-for-old-men/

It's not about "snobbery" or "not getting it."
It's about a film that is a chase movie (the baddie chases the trailer trash with the money, and both are pursued by the sheriff).
A chase must have a finish line.
Even "The Tortoise and the Hare" knew that.
There's no need to imply that Sergio and I "don't get it."
We just don't enjoy bad storytelling.
A story needs a beginning, a middle and an end.
NO COUNTRY had two out of three.

I feel bound to remind that the coens were attracted to an existing book by Cormac McCarthy and adapted it faithfully. They crafted an enigmatic ending knowing full well that it wasn't necessarily a conventionally satisfying one. The point is, the world has some bad shit in it. Sure, we want the good guy to get the bad guy. We don't want him to give up on fighting the fight against evil. No Country for Old Men is great BECAUSE it flouts our expectations and disappoints our need for fantasy. As the kid says in E.T., "this is reality." Put me in the camp that wants to be challenged by movies like this. While I would posit that Todd Haynes and Paul Thomas Anderson--both truly gifted--could think about making their films more accessible to audiences, I would not lob that at the Coens. They know exactly what they're telling us, how, when and why.

Everyone's entitled to their opinions, but NO COUNTRY has gotten some of the best reviews this year. 96% Fresh!

It's a lock for at least 4 top Oscar nominations incl. Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Supporting Actor (Bardem's the current frontrunner).

Yeah, some folks can't handle the fact that it doesn't have a Happy Ending. Yawn.

Guess what, guys? Neither does life, which is exactly the point the film is trying to make.

i don't know how people always want the ending to be served to them on a Silver platter, if you get what i mean. The movie was completely faithfull to the book, and you people want the good guy to kill the bad guy, well if the good guy stole money that didn't belong to him, i guess he's not really good, but normal, and if the ending was different from the book, then you make the stink about it, not because it meets your personal standards, but because it would became a hollywood bullshit fairytale. Imagine The Godfather not staying true to the book, and at the end everyone just blew eachother and ran through a feild of flowers. Think about it, it would suck, so leave the ending of movies to the guys making it, and just be happy they are entertaining you.

Dixon Steele: I don't need a "happy ending." (Well, maybe on the massage table.)

I just want some kind of an ending, or something that at least makes you think. NO COUNTRY didn't even do that.
The emperor has no clothes (and we all know it.)
Were the writers just lazy, or ran out of ideas???

Bad ending? I have to agree with Pecos and Sergio.

I liked the movie right up to the end, and that’s where the Coen brothers really screwed the pooch. And here’s the thing, it wouldn’t have taken much to turn this movie into an all time classic. I think the film makers just lost their nerve and didn’t have the guts to pull off the kind of ending this film was crying out for.

Here’s my alternative ending – the one that should have been filmed:

Moss gets to the motel in El Paso. Just as he checks in he notices the clerk is nervous and stuff. So Moss is totally aware something is about to go down. Moss plays it cool though, goes to his room and closes the door behind him.

The Mexican drug dealers burst through the door, guns a blazing and swearing up a storm in Spanish. But Moss isn’t there. The Mexican bad guys are confused. There is no back door to the motel room and they’ve been watching the front door. Where is Moss?

Well, he’s suspended above them. He had wedged himself into an alcove waiting their arrival. Now here’s the cool part. Just as the camera pans out to show us where Moss is waiting to attack from, we go into a flashback. Moss is back in the jungles of Nam where it turns out he was a badass special ops commando who was specially trained by the greatest Kung Fu masters of the era. We see Moss in Nam dropping down from the trees on a bunch of gooks and taking them all out.

Then all of a sudden we are back in the motel room. Moss drops down on the Mexicans and takes them all on without the aid of gun. In one memorable scene, Moss breaks the ribs of one of the bad guys, takes the broken bone out of his chest and then uses it to stab the man in the throat.

Moss gets out of there after he’s killed all the Mexicans. But he returns that night to pick up the money which he has left in the vent. As he is getting the money, Chigura shows up. By the time Chigura enters the room, Moss has disappeared.

Chigura starts working on the vent. He gets the grate off with a coin. But just when he looks in the vent, there is Moss. Somehow Moss has slithered into the vent and is laying on his stomach, shotgun in hand, waiting for Chigura.

Moss says “You looking for something Bub” And then pulls the trigger blowing the top of Chigura’s head off.

Fast forward 4 weeks. Moss and his wife bury Moss’s mother in law. They go home. They go into their room and Chigura is sitting there – his face and head a mangle of rotting skin, old bandages and dried blood. Moss tries to bargain for his life. But Chigura is determined to kill him. But Chigura says he might spare Moss's wife. So Chigura flips a coin and tells Moss to call it.

Moss ponders this for a second, then says:

“I call you, asshole”

Chigura looks confused. Just then, a booby-trap spike made out of bamboo comes screaming out the closet and impales Chigura – killing him for good. Moss was waiting for Chigura. The booby-trap was just another trick he picked up from the gooks in Nam.

Oh, and by the way. It turns out the Sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) was Chigura’s dad and that’s why he quit the force. He could have taken Chigura out, but he loved his son and couldn’t do it.

I love the "artsy" crowd praising the movie. I see a film to watch the good guy beat the bad guys. Call me simple, but give me The Duke or Dirty Harry, Casey Ribeck or Popeye Doyle. I rarely go to the movies because I am rarely entertained. The people in that theatre yesterday were all demanding their money back. It will no doubt win every imaginable award, from the vapid, mindless, self-serving hollywood yaps! I'm with you John Courage.

The film is great for many reasons and one of which is its ending. No one has yet discussed the possibilities of the Sheriff being killed at the crime scene or not. Is it possible the Sheriff's speech at the end is a flashback and the killer indeed killed him as well?

I've been a Coen brothers fan since Blood Simple. I was 20 and I was hooked!
I have not read the book (No Country...), but the ending of the movie made me ponder for countless hours, and here is what I concluded. I believe the sheriff succumbs to the forces of evil and has taken the money. That is why his father has come to him in his dreams--he was attempting to pass the proverbial torch of lawfulness and his son has failed him.
Now I have to go get the book!!!!!!!!!

You really think this movie would be nearly as powerful and badasss if it was some hokey ending a la: Moss kicks everyones ass and retires in Mexico with his wife and on the way drops a few hundred grand at Tommy Lee Jones house. The way that movie set up Moss could not get through that situation - he was in over his head, reeling, on the defensive, and had the flaw of greed. Think DiCaprio in Departed, not Bale in Batman. No doubt you want to see the happy ending, but come on this isnt Mighty Ducks 2.

Another remedial reading candidate who thinks we want a happy ending. Summer school?

Another pompous, oblivious English major who has not heard about audiences demanding money back after the ending of this movie, not to mention that about 30% of posters here push for the happy ending

May have worked as a book but the film, close to the 11.05 script, scatters the third act abandoning the hero and villain and dramatic tension for no benefit, and relying on an uncomfortable Tommy Lee Jones to preach for the ending in a flat, poetry-free last scene.

The idea of evil winning is trite. What matter is how you got there ie it is powerful only as the result of dramatic construction. You can hear Aristotle muttering, What about catharsis?

A rigorous look at the script was needed. The ending need not be neat but it should follow from and arise out of the material.

Pecos - it's not that the movie doesn't have a beginning, a middle and an end; it does have all three. But the end doesn't fit the movie, or the movie doesn't have enough in it to fit the ending.

The whole film plays out as a thriller, and moves along tightly, tensely, relentlessly focused on plot and event. To end with the kind of poetry it wants to, it either needs to let the events speak for themselves by not having a character come on and explain them or it needs to set that character up properly before he comes on.

What it seemed to me to do was neither - it uses Tommy Lee Jones too much for him to blend into the plot without us wondering what to expect from him (that, or, he's too distinctive an actor to not have us waiting for something), but it uses him too little to have resonance as the piece closes. So that scene at the end, which is wonderful in itself, throws us off by adding explicit characterisation and themes in cryptic words and extraneous running time. If groundwork had been laid for that scene earlier by more of the Jones character, it would have worked better. If the scene had been left out completely, the movie would have worked better.

It probably does work better a second time. As it was, I felt unsatisfied - not by the lack of an 'ending' or a 'resolution' but by what had gone before not quite balancing out with the finale as it should.

It's probably just a miscalculation, but it *felt* like the Coens made this movie so taut and then ended it so experimentally just as a playful rebuke to the idea of a dramatic climax, and therefore just to see people get pissed off. A cheapish game, like someone staring at you and smirking, wanting you to ask "What's up?" so they can say "I didn't say anything!"

Self-appointed film sophisticates, who love to scorn things like dramatic resolution as petty and those who crave them simple-minded, of course love this kind of shit, whether in a good movie like this or any other. Ergo their joy and willingness to tell you how stupid you are if that kind of thing doesn't flip your trigger.

Ok, most of the complaints are NOT about the "bad guys" winning, and that fact is not what makes this one of the worst movie endings of all time.

Evil was winning throughout the entire film, that the film wouldn't get a happy ever after was in fact highly obvious.

But the fact that you didn't get to actually SEE the ending was just something the Cohens did to pee people in the face. "Yes there is an ending, we're just not going to show you hahah".

You can easily show the death of a main character without making a huge thing out of it. Think Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction. It has the same effect without reducing your (up to that point) masterpiece into some provocative bullsh*t experiment.

Excellent movie....good ending

People asking for their money back afterwards....c'mon...they probably used their refunded $$$ to rent Spiderman 3 again....now there's an ending...I knew that Green Goblin (disfigurement and all) would still have Spidey's back when the crap hit the fan

Here we go again! American films have no endings. House of Sand and Fog anyone?
Sorry but foreplay is followed by climax - I just have blue movie balls now. Thx for nothing Coens!

A truly dissapointing ending. Who gives a shit about your silly dream cause your feeling insecure, we all have nightmares pal even kids. How about you do your fucking job properly and deal with that psychopathic ugly twat. Call me thick but i wpuld personally show what psycho was if I was the sheriff in that county. Im the law and i call the shots, good or evil law is law, abide by it or die by it.

Amazes me how much people can insult each other over having a different point of view and/or mindset. I won't take sides and hope i don't have to trade insults. Just don't mistake that attitude as an indication i can't defend myself.
So my friend calls me a couple days back and asks me if i want to see a movie. We usually just hit the antique car shows around here, so this was different. He said he saw this movie. And it was haunting him. He wanted to see it again. In my work I've seen lots of blood and guts and a bit of spilled out brains, and no, I don't work the slaughterhouse.
Now just as the scary dude is trying to pull the deputy's head off with the handcuffs, i mean right in the middle of that scene, some guy has me and my friend stand up while he waddles past us to his seat. When I sat down I realized how rude that was. But i decided to leave it alone.
Anyway, I do have a few comments relating to some of the places the film pushed me. And it was sort of a pushy film; I didn't just sit calmly, my hands got cold and clenched. I related to Moss, identified with him to a point, except i would have had to give the guy in the truck agua (water) right off. But no way i would have gone back to give him water. I would have known he'd be dead. Man gets shot like that and he's most of all thirsty it's because he's bled out and he's on the way out.
Now remember when TL talks about not finding Gd, in a way that he makes it sound like he wonders, did Gd reject him? Well at the end it seems to me that Gd gave him the sign or a sign that there will be redemption for TL. I felt, and I mean felt, that the dream was like his father (The Father?)was wrapped (the blanket) in a death shroud. And the father's going up ahead to light the warming fire (The Light,)which light would be there when TL crossed over.
I admit I did not understand quite what had happened in that last series of motel scenes, the one with all the cops and the one where TL goes back by himself. It took a while to sink in, and when they showed Moss from that distance shot in the morgue, I didn't see any moustache and didn't even know it was him. But sometimes the delay in understanding is kinda like when a big fish takes your bait and you let him run with it just a bit before you set the hook. So it did sink in and made me chilled a bit.
And how would TL have reacted once he knew he let the scary guy get away...I mean after being so close? Did he know Scary was right there? Did he back off because he lost his nerve when confronted that close with certain and sudden death? So did the Moss lady really get offed by Scary? I think TL would have appeared a bit more stricken at the end if he had know that...and i do believe he could have pulled off showing that added burden just by the look in his eyes.
Definitely not Stallone. But I've never seen a Stallone film that had me listening very carefully when i came home to an empty house. And I never did have any one tell me they felt haunted by a Stallone film.
To each.

Lol. The title should be "No Ending For Old People"! Take IT! Not speaking to any one person in particular but don't whine because you're used to a beginning and end for your dollar. If it was entertaining or left you squabling at the end, it's done the job well! The ending was perfect. Only, I don't know how entertaining the sequel will be, NO THANKS to the spoiler in the article. I was upset about that! Putting [SPOILER] in front of the text makes it worse (damn human tendencies). Great plot, great cast, great movie. Simple.

"You can hear Aristotle muttering, What about catharsis?"

---

I don't think there is anything necessarily bad about anti-climactic films. "Wages of Fear" is one of the greatest movies off all time even though the movie's version of Llewelyn gets killed in the end. Of course, "Wages of Fear" was hard-core, genuine existentialism as opposed to the watered down nonsense of Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers.

The central theme of the film was "Hazard", i.e., - dumb luck, happenstance.

As such, the ending was entirely appropriate.

From playing guessing games with store clerks to an auto "accident" - the villain survived Hazard where others did/could not.

Woody Allen used the same theme recently in 'Matchpoint' (?)...