A Modern-day Classic!

Rating: 10/10 (2 March 2008)

I read a comment before from an IMDb member who gave this movie a 1-rating out of 10. This member stated that he/she loved the style of this film, but did not understand the purpose of this movie. I respect this members opinion greatly and I understand his/her poor rating. This movie may require some, if not most, viewers to take the time and watch it a second time, making sure that they watch and listen to every single thing that occurs throughout this feature. Even then one might come up with a different feeling or understanding of the movie. For me, it all revolved around Tommy Lee Jones' character, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.
The movie begins with a voice-over. Bell, whose grandfather and father were both sheriff's, recounts how in the old days a Sheriff did not carry a weapon. One day, Bell arrested a man who killed a 14 year old girl. Bell recounts that his man told him that he had been planning on killing and if he were turned loose, he would kill again because he knew he was going to hell. Sheriff Bell sets the tone by telling us how these kinds of actions, "a crime of passion," as its referred to in the movie, would not have occurred in the "old days".
The body, or middle of the movie, displays one man, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), come across upwards of $2 million dollars in cash, a stack of drugs (heroin, cocaine..?), and a slew of men massacred in what appears to be a drug-deal-gone-bad. Instead of reporting this to the police, Moss decides to keep the money and leave the scene unreported. Then there is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a psychopathic hit-man searching for, and killing anyone he encounters, the missing $2 million. These two characters, i believe, represent what Ed Tom Bell is referring to at the beginning of the movie. One mans lust for money, Moss, gets him into trouble with an insensitive and psychopathic killer, Chigurh. Its a bleak statement of where this world is heading, and Bell just can't keep up with it.
Much like this film begins, it ends with Ed Tom Bell telling his wife about a dream he had the previous night. In this dream, Bell recounts, his father riding horseback into the darkness and disappearing. Bell believes that his father was fixing a fire to keep warm in the cold mountains. Following in his fathers trails, Bell would get to his father and then wake up from his dream. This symbolized, i believe, how Bell so wants to go to his father, who represents the "old days", and is anguished by the state of the world as it is today and is it will become in the future.