No Country for Old Men Violence Quotes

Talk about nostalgia. We're guessing Sheriff Ed Tom is one of those guys who thinks everything was better in the past: movies, music, and (naturally) crime. Back in those days, men were men and sheriffs were sheriffs, y'hear? Why, they didn't even need to carry guns! Yeahhhh, sure, Ed Tom. He may be reluctant to draw his gun, but we bet those old-time sheriffs weren't afraid to defend themselves—and we bet those old-time criminals weren't winning any Nobel Peace prizes.

Here, Sheriff Bell is recounting the story of a guy who (gasp!) seems to be a real psychotic piece of work. And, sure, he seems a little nuts. But we're pretty sure that insane, violent criminals have existed throughout human history. It takes some real ego to think that you're living in the first age to see truly meaningless violence.

Killers. What is it with them, right? Ed Tom can't make sense of killers who want nothing more from life than to murder other people. He'd like to think that people are good deep down, but he just can't see how that's possible in a world filled with so many brutal killers. Hm. We're going to say that maybe it's impossible to generalize about human nature: some people are cold-hearted killers, while some people are pretty decent folk when you get to know them.

Oaky, we admit that it sure does seem like the world is a more violent place than it used to be … but it's probably not. Violence is frightening and meaningless no matter when it happens—and Ed Tom certainly isn't the first guy to think that kids these days are worse than ever.

Brrr. There's a chilling coldness to the way Anton Chigurh kills people that makes the murder just a little bit worse than it has to be. In this scene, he simply asks a man to hold still while he holds an air-powered steer killer to his head and shoots a needle into his brain. And the guy does it—because he trusts his fellow human beings. Welp, not any more (for about the .02 seconds he has left alive).

Here, Ed Tom is relating a story about how no one noticed people digging graves in a crowded neighborhood until a naked man wearing nothing but a dog collar ran out of the house screaming. Well, sure, that's a terrible story … but AHEM what about the Holocaust? Or slavery? Gruesome things happen all the time, and people just look the other way.

It's clear from Ed Tom's list that Anton Chigurh has no regard for human life. He kills people and takes their cars as if he were mowing grass. And worse yet, he almost always preys on the people who are kindest and most trusting. To him, violence is less an active choice than a side effect. Now that's scary.

After all of Ed Tom's moaning about the state of the modern world, here comes ice-cold bounty hunter Carson Wells to set him straight. Wells is unimpressed by Anton Chigurh's path of destruction. He knows that psycho killers are a dime a dozen in modern-day America (and probably always have been). All he cares about is making money by tracking them down.

Carson Wells tries to give Llewellyn Moss a crash course in all things Anton Chigurh, like how there's no way he (Moss) could ever make a deal with Chigurh because he has already made the mistake of annoying the man. It doesn't matter if he gives up the money. Chigurh will follow him to the ends of the Earth to kill him—not because he's an especially violent guy, but because he has a code to follow. See, Sheriff Bell? There is honor in the modern world.

Carla Jean Moss doesn't understand Anton Chigurh's code of violence and refuses to respond to it. When Chigurh tracks her down so he can keep his word to her (dead) husband, Carla Jean is frankly baffled—and not interested in playing his silly coin flip game. But refusing to participate in a violent system doesn't allow you to step outside it. It's still going to get you—just like Chigurh gets Carla Jean.