Roger Ebert's explanation of the "No Country" plot

AGAIN, MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS! NONE OF THIS IS SAFE TO READ! STOP AND SEE THE MOVIE FIRST!


I mean that too. This is a great movie, already in imdb.com's top 25 with over 11,000 votes in less than a month of its release. While scanning the blogs, I realized I read Roger Ebert's review prior to watching No Country for Old Men, but not afterwards. There was a spoiler in it that ruined the movie (indeed some of the better parts) which I wisely skipped over (the Chirugh in me was very tempted to read). Reading the review again, I realized it explained such plot that much more of the movie makes sense. Please allow me quote Mr. Ebert before going into further detail... I quote...



If the men in the drug deal all killed one another, and the man who unknowingly carried the transponder died under the tree, how did Chigurh come into the picture? I think it's because he set up the deal, planned to buy the drugs with the "invested" $2 million, end up with the drugs and get the money back. That the actual dealers all killed one another in the desert and the money ended in the hands of a stranger was not his plan. That theory makes sense, or it would, if Chigurh were not so peculiar; it is hard to imagine him negotiating such a deal. "Do you have any idea," Carson Wells asks him, "how crazy you really are?"



End of quote...

I will say, briefly, I admire Mr. Ebert, and this explanation which gives greater detail to the plot without making it obvious or destracting from the scenes of characters revealing themselves. It makes sense as well.

Why exactly should we buy his explanation. First off, Chirugh is- for lack of a better word- pretty damn ****ed up. He kills. He probably doesn't know why, but he does. I don't see it outside of his actions to set up a situation where he has to kill, I don't know... a bunch of mexican drug dealers? He did know off the bat who sent Carson Welles to recover the money, which gives me reason to believe he put the money before people so he could kill them all and steal everything, including what he "invested." But because Chirugh is Chirugh, he gets caught up in killing instead of recovering what he had lost. It also explains why he kills his "managerial" associates and everyone else without issue or thought... he's planned this for the bloodbath and is so far ahead of the game, only the unplanned Moss is putting up anything of a race.

What I appreciate about the Coen's (if this explanation is true) is they don't reveal this. In a time of twist endings, they don't show this mighty subplot of revealing how everything happened from the beginning, but leaves us in awe of the characters instead of distracted with the excessive details in the plot. They avoid this so well, in hindsight, I'm curious if the twist in Saw distracted me from more entertaining torture.

On a final note, I firmly believe a good book should not get in the way of a good movie, and a good movie should not get in the way of a good book. Let each be true to making their respective feild as good as it can be. Please don't tell me what the plot is in the book, because I'm not criticizing the book, I'm examining the movie. Until I walk up to Cormac McCarthy and tell him to make his book more like the movie, I ask the same of those who feel the movie ruins a book. To each feild their own.

Thanks,
Robert in the Red Tie