The Angel of Death Plays No Favorites

Rating: 9/10 (10 February 2008)

He wanders the harsh West Texas landscape like the angel of death, dispensing a justice only he understands. He is accountable to no known human constraint; not logic, not the law, and certainly not compassion. He is the embodiment of the escalating senseless death we see in our society, from Columbine to Virginia Tech, and for us to try to understand him is as futile as a steer attempting to understand the slaughter, which makes his weapon of choice all the more poignant.
No Country For Old Men rubs our noses in the fecal matter of being human. Namely, that we are constantly being stalked by the angel of death, we have no idea when he will overtake us, but every day we live we are certain he is closer at hand than the day before. We stand by as others are taken, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. The good often die long before they deserve; the bad often die long after they deserve. The young die as well as the old. It's as senseless as a Fellini (or Coen Brothers) movie and as random as a coin toss.
The movie had to end the way it did because when it comes to random, unexplained violence, we never know who will be next, anymore than we could predict what numbers will come up in the lottery by looking at the ones that came before. We can only take comfort in the fact that our fathers faced the same realities, and their fathers before them, and we can hope that somehow our ancestors are preparing the way for us when our time is at hand.