“What are you going to do?”
“I’m fixin to do something dumern hell but I’m going anyways. If I don’t come back tell Mother I love her.”
“Your mother’s dead Llewelyn.”
“Well I’ll tell her myself then.”
So begins one of the most tense action sequences in the history of cinema. If you don’t recognise that exchange from Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country For Old Men, you may recognise it from the Coen Brother’s Oscar-winning adaption, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this month.
Adapted almost directly from McCarthy’s book, the Coen’s taut and muscular film explores the question of whether any man can outrun his judgement. As Anton Chigurh, the mysterious, near-mythic hitman set to decide your fate with a coin toss and a bolt pistol, Javier Bardem is the embodiment of this main thesis.
But, memorable as Bardem is, the film’s best scene doesn’t begin with a coin toss, it starts at night, as hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) leaves his wife to take water to a dying Mexican drug smuggler. Moss comes across the aftermath of a deal gone bad while out hunting that afternoon. The bandito is dying, crying out for agua. After recuperating the dealers’ money and secreting it beneath his trailer home, Moss suffers a crisis of conscience and goes out to carry a sup of water to the injured man.
Things go downhill from there. Over the next three minutes and fifty three seconds we’re treated to a chase scene to rival anything in cinema, in a film that is essentially two hours of back-to-back chase scenes.
Silhouetted against the Texan hills in black and shades of blue, Moss makes his way to the truck. He pauses. The dealer he spoke with earlier is slumped over. The truck door is open and there is a fresh pool of blood on the ground. With little more than a weary expression, we see Moss deliberate. He wheels around, seeing only his own truck standing out against the ridge line. Something is amiss. But it’s already too late to turn back, Moss is already ensnared in the trap.
While the audience pleads with Moss to turn back, our man sets down the water jug, draws his .45 pistol, and approaches the truck. A close-up of the bandito’s blasted out head warns us of the violence to come. And here it is: a new truck, men, voices on the ridge beside Moss’s truck. Moss hides. Breathes. Prays. The truck trundles towards him, its electric lights in the darkness painting it like something from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.
Shots ring out. Moss ducks, runs. He crawls under a truck, not yards away, but it’s no place to hide. Then he’s up and running into the darkness, towards a crackling thunderstorm in the distance, the dark shape of his body only occasionally caught by the lights of the pursuing truck. Literally and figuratively, Moss has entered the darkness and is heading towards a potentially fatal storm.
A palette of beautiful deep blues make up the sky, with a smidge of blood red off to the east. The silver weaves of a river appear. Moss is shot in the shoulder and falls. While we scream get up, go! He pulls off his boots and jacket and wades into the water. The snarls of a dog can be heard as his pursuers take aim. Moss dives into the water. A pitbull – all muscle and teeth – launches itself in after him and gives chase.
Moss swims in the pre-dawn gloom, the river threatening to wash him away. The dog pants after him, gaining ground on the injured man. At the last moment Moss pulls himself from the river. He takes out his river-soaked pistol, ejects the bullet from the chamber, blows into it to shake out the water… all the while the dog has gained the bank and is hurtling towards him. At the final second, Moss reloads, stands and fires, even as the dog is in the air. The dog’s momentum knock them both to the ground. Only Moss gets back up.
From hereon, he will be pursued to his death.
It is, quite simply, a masterclass in suspense. From bandits to bullets to river rapids to a snarling canine and an unreliable weapon, Moss dodges death on numerous fronts in less time than the average pop song. Apart from the bandits, not a word is spoken; it’s all sighs and grunts and gasps – all of which show that Brolin has long been one of our most visceral actors.
The colours add to the stakes, too. This isn’t a high speed car chase down a sunny European street. It isn’t a guy doing parkour as he dodges bad guys in an American city. Or a guy running from a helicopter over a beautiful moor. It’s dark, it’s wet, it’s cold. Despite the expanse of the Texan landscape it’s an incredibly claustrophobic scene. The darkness presses in. For most of the sequence it’s difficult to even see what’s going on.
Not a single note of music or score is played – here or elsewhere in the film. Moss is utterly, absolutely alone. That he survives so long is a miracle, and one that few films since have dared try and repeat.
