Moss follows, figuring there's one thing missing from the scene. He finds it in a satchel, and immediately makes plans to disappear. He tells his wife (Kelly Macdonald) to start packing - "If you lost $2 million," he says, "at what point would you stop looking for it?"
McCarthy is a wizard with poetry and economy of border country lingo, faithfully adapted here by the Coens. Are they masters of stylized, regional dialogue? You betcha.
The Coens turn out to be eerily well-matched to McCarthy's hard-to-film style - they grasp his sense of the macabre, and their skill at scene-setting captures his vivid sense of place.
With "No Country For Old Men,"
they've lucked into his most (only?) cinematic book, one that comes with a camera-ready hook - there's no more basic movie ingredient than the suitcase full of money.
Unless it's the bad man who's looking for it. And unless I miss my guess, the Coen-McCarthy connection has yielded an all-time movie creep in Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem).
The movie dares you to laugh at Chigurh, with his '70s anchorman hair and curious choice of weapon - a pneumatic hole puncher that he drags around with an attached tank of compressed air, like someone in an old folks home.
But there's nothing funny about his methods. Chigurh pursues the money with a clinical ruthlessness, casually killing policemen, a desk clerk, cab drivers, - anyone who impedes his mission.
If he were merely an assassin, this process might sink into dull nihilism. Chigurh, however, sometimes decides to spare a life, or allow a coin flip (in one memorable scene) to determine a man's fate. Every encounter becomes more suspenseful, and Chigurh becomes more of a riddle.
