Plus, the coin flip and its results are very different in the book.
The conversation they have is similar to the book, but she appears much calmer in the movie than in the book. Near the end of the movie Carla Jean is confronted by Chigurh in her mother’s house after she returns from her mother’s funeral.
The Scene With Moss’ Wife And Chigurh Plays Out Very Differently In The Movie Moss meets the woman at the hotel pool where he is supposed to meet his wife and she invites him to have a drink with her in her room and has a conversation with her foretelling the shootout to come.Īs Bell approaches the hotel, he hears gunshots and watches a truck scramble from the parking lot of the hotel and walks up on the scene to find Moss murdered, presumably by the Mexican crew.The way the Coens' present the murder makes it much more shocking and surprising, adding a lot to the film and the consequences of Moss' actions. This leads to Moss’ final scene in the movie.
The phone call between Carla Jean and Bell, where she tells Bell where Moss also reveals his location to the Mexican crew chasing the money, the hotel where they are supposed to meet. In the movie, this plays out much differently. When he does put down his gun, they kill him anyway. In the book, Moss picks up a hitchhiker and has a conversation with her about life and gives her some money from the case before encountering the Mexicans, who take the hitchhiker hostage and them threaten to kill the woman unless Moss puts down his weapon. Moss’ Murder Is Presented Very Differently Moss ends up in a hospital in Mexico while Chigurh recovers in a hotel room. What follows is the chase scene that forces Moss to scramble across the border into Mexico after getting severely injured, which is also pretty much exactly how if plays out in the Cormac McCarthy novel.
After killing the hotel clerk, Chigurh shoots the lock with his bolt pistol – the tool used to kill cattle that Chigurh uses to kill the man in his first scene – which sends the lock into Moss’ chest, forcing him to flee the room by jumping from a window, after taking a shot at Chigurh with his shotgun. In the movie, it plays out much differently. Soon though, the conversation breaks down and Moss makes a break for it and the chase scene begins. Moss hears Chigurh coming and hides in the room and gets the jump on Chigurh when he opens the door and holds him at gunpoint while they have a short conversation. In the book, Chigurh kills the hotel clerk and takes a key for the room where he knows Moss is hiding. The scene in the hotel, when Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem in an Oscar-winning performance, tracks down Moss (who is, again, carrying the money he took from the dead drug runners), is changed quite a bit in the movie from the book. The Coen Brothers nail it and the movie is infinitely better for not having to rely on simple tricks to tell the story in the easiest way. In that respect, the film does exactly what it needs to do to tell the story the same way it plays out in the book, without voiceovers, while telling the same story with the same tone. Instead of the inner-monologue in the Cormac McCarthy book, much of Bell’s thoughts are conveyed to other other characters, like his revelation about the cattle-killing tool that Chigurh is using that Bell has in a conversation with Carla Jean Moss, Llewelyn’s wife, played by the wonderful Kelly Macdonald in the movie. It makes for a much more rewarding movie when the story develops naturally, rather than someone reading a book on tape with pictures behind the words. The Coens are definitely not lazy and it presents a great challenge to tell the No Country For Old Men story without hitting the audience over the head with constant voiceovers explaining the action. On film, doing something very hacky like constant voiceover monologues and exposition too often serves as a lazy way for filmmakers to fit these kinds of thoughts in films. It is hard to convey the thoughts and feelings of a character without their inner dialog that is easy to do in books. Whenever books are translated to film, there is almost always something lost in this way.