What the movie relies on (that is to say, what it's ABOUT) is people whose actionable moral systems are profoundly out of sync with their situation.Darth Wong wrote: What a load of horseshit. People in trailer parks move more readily than people with real homes, and it creates less of a stir when they do so. What the fuck makes you think some guy living in a shithole trailer park has to spend a lot of time doing logistics planning for a real move? Or that it would create a big stir when he does? All he has to say is "I'm sick of this dump, I'm gonna go east."
And the idea that he would have gotten inevitably tracked down is bullshit too; the transmitter doesn't have a very long range, and a random search would take forever. And who the hell wouldn't move the money out of the case and into a nondescript duffel bag right away? Even if he doesn't know about the transmitter, anyone with half a brain would say to himself: "Shit, I don't want someone seeing this case and recognizing it".
Once more: the story relies upon epic idiocy.
It is a black comedy/thriller about doing the wrong thing for reasons which myopically seem reasonable.
Sheriff Ed Tom Bell:
A law enforcement man who thinks that he is a relic of better times. His methods depend on criminals who are dumb, or don't indiscriminately kill to cover their tracks, or people who respect the law enough to call it in when they stumble across a mass-murder scene. He is personally determined to halt the unfolding crime-spree and takes it as a personal failure when he is late to the scene every time. His uncle calls him on his unrealistic expectations and reminds him Texas has never been peaceful, but Bell still retires ignominiously, convinced the world has degenerated beyond his ability to redeem it, instead of just changing like it always does.
Moss:
Investigates a mass-murder scene personally because he is a Rugged Individualist. Refuses water to a gut-shot dying man because he's almost certainly scum, as proven by his presence at the crime scene Moss is investigating; Cowboy Justice. Returns to the scene because refusing a dying man's wish for water is a shitty thing to do; even death rowers get a last meal. Turns out that was a bad idea.
Now that the drug runners have his scent, he believes that confrontation is inevitable, and that he will see it through as a Rugged Individualist. In a confrontation with Chigurh, Moss takes near-mortal wounds and flees into Mexico where he refuses one offer to give up the money and walk away, and another to give up the money, still die, but spare his wife. Because he is a Cowboy (or maybe just remembers the Alamo, at this point) he still refuses, calls Bell for help at last, and still dies, having tried to bring The Law on board rather late in the day.
Chigurh:
Well, for starters, he's a sociopathic murderer. But even among murderers he's out of sync. He believes he is an agent of impersonal fate, and lets random whims or coin tosses decide people's lives. He kills many co-workers who come between him and Moss because he is the "one right tool" to do the job.
The theme is driven home in the ending. Chigurh is in bad shape after killing Moss' wife, having sustained a compound fracture in a random accident and an onlooking kid sells him the shirt off his back to use as a splint because a hundred bucks for a shirt is a great deal; consequently the mass murderer walks away before emergency services arrive.
It is obvious to any viewer with even a sliver of intelligence that the things these people are doing are Perversely Wrong. For one willing to entertain the possibility that the characters' actions are developmental from their initial conditions, NCFOM is an austere dark gem. Or one might axiomatically reject the premises of the movie one by one, because everyone knows that if you want clear-headed thinking in a crisis, you drive to the nearest trailer park and ask a lower-class veteran Cowboy with delusions of badassness.
One might also argue that Hamlet should have listened to the ghost and stabbed his Uncle in Act 1 Scene 2, and that nubile young teens should always pack heat when they go camping. Technically correct, but missing the point.
...Your attempts to defend that idiocy as being logical decision-making in context are nothing more than fanboyism. The real problem is that you watched the film, you were too uncritical to pick up on how fucking stupid he was, and when other people pointed out what an incredible imbecile he was, you felt compelled to defend him because you didn't pick up on it yourself.
Ascribing motives to your opposition is a fairly primitive rhetorical gambit, especially when the topic is one as subjectively unstable as art appreciation.I might reciprocate by speculating that your uncharacteristic anti-intellectual populism in consistently attacking "high art" is a subconscious outlet to pander to the troglodytes so frequently alienated by your ruthlessly scientific manner, compounded in this case by an inability to entertain the existence of lethal logically unwieldy moral systems in fictional realms in blind defiance of their plenitude in reality. Fortunately I'm too classy for that sort of thing.
...and don't even HONESTLY believe a word of it; I also hope that you don't really think I'm so dense that I regularly sit through movies thinking that their flawed characters are really paragons of whatever trait they lack. Low blows aside, it was a mistake to present Moss' options in what seemed a logical fashion, (though you'll find I used that word 0 times in previous posts, and "stupid" or synonyms quite a lot), they were "logical" only in the context of his suicidally self-reliant beliefs.
