Chigurh In Cormac Mccarthy's No Country For Old Men

Within the 2007 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is attempting to help Moss, a man who stole money from a drug deal gone bad, evade the vengeance of Chigurh, a dangerous hitman. The Coen brothers, who directed the film, acknowledge that the novel’s title is a representation of the sheriff’s perspective, but in contrast with the novel, the focus of the movie is the multiple characters’ viewpoints about Chigurh and their reactions to him. Throughout the book, Bell shares his viewpoints, but within the movie, they have little significance, and those who pay attention to his thoughtful observations appear unaffected. Additionally, within the film, Moss’s occasional mumblings to himself where …show more content…
Nearly every scene is regarding how a character reacts to and assesses Chigurh’s actions. Sheriff’s ruminations are presented as if they were a response to Chigurh or his effort to facilitate an understanding of Chigurh through analysis of modern day crime. An audience is less focused on Bell’s perspective of events and more focused on each of the character’s involvement with Chigurh. Also, within the film, most of the exploration of principles occurs during Chigurh’s confrontation with each of his victims. During an encounter where Chigurh is about to kill another hitman, Wells, Chigurh asks him, “If the rule you followed led you to this of what use was the rule?” (McCarty 175). Not only is Chigurh’s sense of morality accentuated more than Bell’s, but ironically, his sense of duty. The film presents this principle when he explains to Carla Jean the reason he has to kill her was that he promised her husband he would. Possibly, if the number of scenes that contains Bell’s rhetoric was at least equal to the number of times they are presented in the novel, Chigurh’s brief utterances of morality and duty would have been comparatively less significant as