No Country for Old Men - potential spoilers

[bull]

I thought it was a good flick (kind of like Fargo minus the humor) but was anyone else a little, say, frustrated with the ending? I won't give it away but I was certainly expecting something more along the lines of a show down. At least they could have had the two main characters in the same frame for three seconds. I know that type of thing is cliche but avoiding it completely kind of sucked IMO.

[Chargerguy74]

Watching it I felt that it would end like that, so I wasn't surprised. I think I should pay closer attention to what was said at the end to maybe understand it more???

[Jon Smith]

They deliberately made the ending frustrating...
I think a happy ending would have been the most unpredictable....I was expecting it to end badly all the way through..
Good film, a showdown would have been nice though..

[Orange_Crush]

The end is the message the entire movie is trying to convey.

[bull]

The end is the message the entire movie is trying to convey.

In a sense I agree, but when Tommy Lee Jones's character had that talk with the old cop toward the end (not the one in the restaurant) I figured it would have inspired him to realize that "this ain't anything new" as the guy said (or something similar). In other words he basically had a romanticized image of what it meant to be a Texas lawman and yet the old timers still had some serious scum to deal with in the old days.

I would have liked to at least seen he and the hit man staring each other down for a few seconds.

[Charger_Fan]

I thought it was a good flick (kind of like Fargo minus the humor)

If that's the case, I'll opt out of seeing it. I thought Fargo was in the top 10 stupidest movies ever made. If there was ever a movie made that made me want my money back after seeing it, that was the one.

[Orange_Crush]

The end is the message the entire movie is trying to convey.

In a sense I agree, but when Tommy Lee Jones's character had that talk with the old cop toward the end (not the one in the restaurant) I figured it would have inspired him to realize that "this ain't anything new" as the guy said (or something similar). In other words he basically had a romanticized image of what it meant to be a Texas lawman and yet the old timers still had some serious scum to deal with in the old days.

I would have liked to at least seen he and the hit man staring each other down for a few seconds.

C'mon bull...you have to dig deeper than that.  Don't look at what the characters are...look at what they represent.  When you look at it that way, you see that there was no other way that the movie could have ended.

The "country" in the title is not a physical place.  Its a state of being.  Its where Josh Brolin's character inadvertently put himself when he took the money and where Anton Chighur has lived all his life...where he lives by his own moral code independent of the rules that we live by.  Its a place where the sherriff (a.k.e. the titular "old man") could not go because of his sense of good and evil. 

[bull]

The end is the message the entire movie is trying to convey.

In a sense I agree, but when Tommy Lee Jones's character had that talk with the old cop toward the end (not the one in the restaurant) I figured it would have inspired him to realize that "this ain't anything new" as the guy said (or something similar). In other words he basically had a romanticized image of what it meant to be a Texas lawman and yet the old timers still had some serious scum to deal with in the old days.

I would have liked to at least seen he and the hit man staring each other down for a few seconds.

C'mon bull...you have to dig deeper than that.  Don't look at what the characters are...look at what they represent.  When you look at it that way, you see that there was no other way that the movie could have ended.

The "country" in the title is not a physical place.  Its a state of being.  Its where Josh Brolin's character inadvertently put himself when he took the money and where Anton Chighur has lived all his life...where he lives by his own moral code independent of the rules that we live by.  Its a place where the sherriff (a.k.e. the titular "old man") could not go because of his sense of good and evil. 

I gathered all that and that, as I mentioned above, was what he and the older guy were talking about toward the end. I just figured with the respect the sheriff had for him and other old timers (as mentioned at the beginning with voice over) he would suck it up and realize that to live up to his sense of right and wrong he'd still have to deal with very bad people who operate outside of his "comfort zone" so to speak. Apparently he did realize that and decided to back off instead of deal with the reality of the situation. I can't say I blame him given the circumstance.

[bordin34]

I really like the movie, the whole thing was intense. Lots of shooting and action. My brother read the book and said the lines in the movie were exactly like the book and they followed the exact same plot.

[General_01]

I definately liked the movie. I was frustrated with the ending too, but in the scheme of things it was the right ending. If there was some kind of showdown, then it would have been too cliche' for the Coen brothers.

[THE CHARGER PUNK]

yeah great movie and yeah that ending i was like HUH? i wanted closure but after it came out on dvd i watched it again and really understood what the movie was really all about and the ending made sense -MATT

[rav440]

i liked the movie . the ending was just fine . i know alot of people will hate it because they will pay attention more to the $$$ trail than what was said in the beginning and and the talk with his uncle then his talk with his wife about the dreams he had the night before about his dad .

just as in PULP FICTION so many people hate that movie because they wanted to know what was in the breif case