Bill honestly explained the ending, and the overall theme of the movie, better than any video I’ve seen trying to explain it. The old man is chasing a ghost, the manifestation of the violence of a new world he doesn’t comprehend
I recently watched a Wendigoon (if you know who that is) video from a few years ago about No Country For Old Men and that’s how he explained it also. It was like an hour long video going into detail though, Bill’s description is pretty straight forward making it both quicker and easier to digest.
You’re right, Bill. The Coens aren’t mentioned enough as being among the very best film makers alive today. And they will be remembered. One little factoid that sticks in my head about them is that various actors who’ve been in their films, when asked about how good and natural the dialogue is, always say that every little detail is in the script, right down to the ums and ahs. Brilliant stuff on every level.
The same reason why I love Hamlet so much. It opens in the middle of an even bigger crisis than the one happening in the family with an ongoing war and ends with the foreign army approaching the castle. There’s shit going on outside of the story that will affect or has affected the characters, but that’s how life is, too.
Wellll the good ending is that Anton probably died and the sheriff retired. So the sheriff learned his lesson and Anton got struck down by God for playing God
Yeah I remember thinking, this is one of those moments where death is imminent, 30 seconds away. My most terrifying moment is almost drowning at the beach and those first few seconds I realized my life was in actual danger before barely making it back to the sandbar.
I loved that movie. I empathised with Tommy lee Jones character. I was a VERY rural Police Chief and had to retire finally due to my health deteriorating and not being able to do the job properly anymore. So I felt his character pretty well. I couldnt keep up anymore.
I'm pleasantly amazed the Coens could make "Raising Arizona" and "No Country For Old Men". The word genius is overused today, but the Coens are brilliant bordering on genius.
Your comment made me think: "Fargo" is curiously situated between those two--less overtly comical than "Raising Arizona", but with darkly funny moments, and scary violence, but not has heavy as NCFOM. Still, they manage to get in some great black comedy moments, like Chigur's interaction with the trailer park management lady, or when Moss comes into the western store in his boots & hospital gown (right after the veteran border check guy)...wonderful "light & shade" stuff there...
@nathanlatham5651 yes it is. Raising Arizona is one of the funniest movies ever made, but it's also very deep and heartwarming. There really aren't any films quite like it.
This is one of those movies when if you saw it as a kid you thought it was BORING AS FUCK but when you grow up and go further through life you can look at the message in this film and be in awe. Great movie.
Saw the Coens interviewed on Charlie Rose after the movie came out. They told Charlie they invited Cormac to see the screening of the final cut. Charlie asked them how he reacted to it and they said they heard him chuckling from time to time, apparently liking what he saw. Otherwise didn’t say much.
I like to think Anton is supposed to be Death. That's what I think all the coin tosses are about. The closest Tommy Lee Jones comes to Anton is in the scene at 2:24, where he finds the dime on the ground that Chigurh used to open the vent -- that dime is face up, a heads, the camera does a close up on the coin to show it.
0:28 That’s awesome, I have a 69 F150 that my grandpa won new with a camper back then in a Wheels Afield magazine trivia contest, out of many entries. We used to take the camper all around the U.S. on family road trips, to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite.
The ghost / Grim Reaper theory is strengthened by Chigurh's lack of shadow as he drinks milk in the trailer. In a way, the Sheriff fears the end of his life and dreads meeting Chigurh.
Great video, just subscribed. Good fckng movie. Coen bros always entertain. Some are greater than others but always a fun ride. No country is one of the greatest Westerns of all time.
The book is excellent as well. That performance by Javier Bardem is outstanding. The best psychopath performance ever. Even the small parts were excellent. The characters bring the book to life.
Yes, Bardeen was a devil-like character not a real person. But a Devil-like figure is a common Cohen trope: Blood Simple (Viser), Raising Arizona (Smalls), Miller's Crossing (Bernbaum), Barton Fink (Meadows), Hudsucker Proxy (Aloysius), Fargo (Grossman), Big Lebowski (Treehorn), O Brother (Cooley), The Man Who Wasn’t There (Executioner), Intolerable Cruelty (Myerson), The Ladykillers (Dorr), No Country for Old Men (Chigurh), Burn After Reading (Olsen), A Serious Man (Ableman), Inside Llewyn Davis (Cowboy), Hail, Ceasar! (Smitrovich).
I know it was necessary for the plot, but every time I watch the scene with the cop on the phone I'm internally screaming "Why would you be seated with your back to an obvious crazy person??"
He's right about the Coen brothers. Raising Arizona? Fargo? Barton Fink? True Grit? They are right up there with Scorsese and Speilberg, nearly as good as Kubrick.
@@todesqueagree wholeheartedly. He’s a master at making a bigger than life Hollywood cinematic spectacle (pre Marvel and D.C.),but not in the same class as Kubrick, the Coens and Scorsese. Too much gee whiz with Spielberg, for my taste. There are some less prolific directors that I think are much better, too. Peter Weir, Alexander Payne, Paul Thomas Anderson, to name a few
No Country was the most scared I've ever been in the movie theater, not in Halloween or Silence of the Lambs way where you're scared by what's happening, but in a 3D way, where I thought Chigurh was going to kill us in the theater. When Llewelyn is running from Chigurh after the hotel shootout and he gets in that guy's car and then Chigurh starts pumping bullets into the car, I ducked so low in my seat. And every subsequent bullet made me duck lower because I thought bullets were going to fly out of the screen and hit me. That night I was walking up the stairwell at my parents' place and I kept slowing down to try to see around the corner because I thought dude was going to show up.
I hear you but no movie ever scared me like The Exorcist. I was 13 at the time and I was afraid to go in my room and fall asleep for months. Thought my bed was going to start shaking the devil was coming for me. Totally traumatized
Alright then. Two of 'em. Both had my father in 'em. It's peculiar. I'm older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, first one I don't remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he's gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up...
Good analysis by Bill. Also, he's right if people aren't naming the Coens in their top 3 American directors. For me, there's Kubrick, the Coens, and Scorsese.
Bill Burr is a riot. Yes he also gets the movie in a way a lot of people don’t. Lot of other cookies I’m sure that he mentioned throughout the podcast. Blood Simple,TBL, Man Who Wasn’t There, and O’Brother Where Our’t Thou are all CLASSICS.
I'll go one further; the Coens' best movies are often their least popular ones. Everyone appreciates the genius of Fargo or Miller's Crossing or The Big Lebowski. But Burn After Reading is an absolute gem. O Brother Where Art Thou. The Man Who Wasn't There. Just brilliant movies that were simply too smart for the average cinemagoer.
I remember hating this movie when I first saw it just because of the killing of Brolin's character off screen. I'm fine with stories where the main protagonists die, in fact some of my favourite films of all time have tragic endings, but not actually showing the death I felt robbed me of some closure with the character. Although unique, I kept thinking "how do you do that? Is that even proper writing?" It would be like if at the end of Saving Private Ryan ***26 YEAR OLD SPOILER ALERT*** instead of actually seeing Tom Hanks' Captain Miller dying we just get it mentioned in a conversation between Matt Damon and Edward Burns' surviving characters. Over the years I've rewatched the film many times and came to enjoy it, especially for Javier Bardem who has become one of my favourite and most respected actors, but not being able to see the complete character arch of Moss still bugs me.
@@JM-cf9xyyeah it’s supposed to make you feel unsatisfied, that’s part of its brilliance. No Country is a modern western that establishes but then subverts genre rules. It’s about society and the world as a whole changing. It is no longer the country that Tommy Lee Jones knew. Based on my interpretation of your point, the kind of movie you want is the old westerns. You wanted the confrontation to occur between Moss and Chigurgh, but that’s the old world, this is the new one. The movie successfully made you feel cheated of a satisfying conclusion, that was the point. If that upsets you, that’s fine, it’s not a movie for you. But most people love the movie because it’s about that very dissatisfaction. It’s more realistic, sure, but it’s also more thematically resonant to have Moss fail, to have the sheriff fail and accept that the old old world is gone.
I'm one of the few who just thinks this is an ok film, nothing special. Miller's Crossing, Lebowski and Fargo I much preferred. The supposed tension in this film wasn't really there for me. Maybe a cliche, but just a slight musical score might've helped a bit. Was hyped to watch it as well. Can't like em all, I suppose
No Country is a period peace. There were no ‘84 trucks in the scene because it was 1980. He says how long the coin had been “traveling” and what year was on it in the gas station scene, establishing our year.
Yep, the only problem with Burr's headcanon there is that it robs Chigurh of any threat or agency if he's just a figment of TLJ's sheriff's memory. And Josh Brolin would have gotten away with the money as well.
But Brolin's character wasn't killed by Chigurh, he was killed in the motel by the Mexican cartel guys that found him through his wife and mother-in-law.
My explanation for the ending begins with the scene with Ellis (Barry Corbin), where Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) says that he felt that when he grew older, God would enter his life, but he never did. The person who did enter his life was the specter of Anton Chigurh, who Bell thinks overmatches him. In the end Bell is haunted by dreams of his father, in one his father passes by him on horseback on a dark and cold mountain pass, he goes on ahead forging out the path and using a fiery horn to light the way .... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _... God (in the image of his father) has now entered his life and is leading him from the coldness of the night (the evil of humanity as personified by Anton Chigurh)._
Bill honestly explained the ending, and the overall theme of the movie, better than any video I’ve seen trying to explain it. The old man is chasing a ghost, the manifestation of the violence of a new world he doesn’t comprehend
I recently watched a Wendigoon (if you know who that is) video from a few years ago about No Country For Old Men and that’s how he explained it also. It was like an hour long video going into detail though, Bill’s description is pretty straight forward making it both quicker and easier to digest.
I think it portrays what violence does to a person after decades of exposure
One thing I’ve learned from this channel over time is the Burr has great taste when it comes to film and he gets what makes a great film.
You’re right, Bill. The Coens aren’t mentioned enough as being among the very best film makers alive today. And they will be remembered. One little factoid that sticks in my head about them is that various actors who’ve been in their films, when asked about how good and natural the dialogue is, always say that every little detail is in the script, right down to the ums and ahs. Brilliant stuff on every level.
No happy ending, just a bunch of shi# that happened. Just like real life.
The same reason why I love Hamlet so much. It opens in the middle of an even bigger crisis than the one happening in the family with an ongoing war and ends with the foreign army approaching the castle. There’s shit going on outside of the story that will affect or has affected the characters, but that’s how life is, too.
Wellll the good ending is that Anton probably died and the sheriff retired. So the sheriff learned his lesson and Anton got struck down by God for playing God
You should read Blood Meridian by the same author, Cormac McCarthy. Makes No Country For Old Men read like a Disney movie.
Irl the Coens chopped their dicks off.
Yeah but it's not necessarily a realistic movie or scenario. It's good that's about it.
2:45 When you first see the silhouette of that second truck against the black horizon and the cold night sky... man, my heart almost stopped.
Yeah I remember thinking, this is one of those moments where death is imminent, 30 seconds away. My most terrifying moment is almost drowning at the beach and those first few seconds I realized my life was in actual danger before barely making it back to the sandbar.
Bill wearing out dvds matches his personality
Physical media is key. Better audio visual quality than streaming. Streaming services can't just take it away from you.
I didn't even know that was possible, I've watched a few DVDs dozens of times and last I checked they still work
dvds dont "wear out". he clearly just doesnt know how to handle them
I loved that movie.
I empathised with Tommy lee Jones character.
I was a VERY rural Police Chief and had to retire finally due to my health deteriorating and not being able to do the job properly anymore. So I felt his character pretty well.
I couldnt keep up anymore.
I'm pleasantly amazed the Coens could make "Raising Arizona" and "No Country For Old Men". The word genius is overused today, but the Coens are brilliant bordering on genius.
Haven’t seen Raising Arizona, is it that good>
Your comment made me think: "Fargo" is curiously situated between those two--less overtly comical than "Raising Arizona", but with darkly funny moments, and scary violence, but not has heavy as NCFOM. Still, they manage to get in some great black comedy moments, like Chigur's interaction with the trailer park management lady, or when Moss comes into the western store in his boots & hospital gown (right after the veteran border check guy)...wonderful "light & shade" stuff there...
George Miller made Mad Max as well as Babe…
@nathanlatham5651 yes it is. Raising Arizona is one of the funniest movies ever made, but it's also very deep and heartwarming. There really aren't any films quite like it.
What made those trucks look so cool was the roll bar in the bed, behind the cab. Travolta's truck in Urban Cowboy is my favorite movie truck.
“… then I woke up.”
What an ending, so good 😊
Bill plays up his meathead Bostonian persona but he always has the smartest analysis of movies.
My boy's wicked smaht
Meathead?! Whatchu talkin about, meathead?! Hey! I’m takin ta you!
safe suburb of Boston😆
This is one of those movies when if you saw it as a kid you thought it was BORING AS FUCK but when you grow up and go further through life you can look at the message in this film and be in awe. Great movie.
Zero boring at any age
One of the most perfect films ever made, but my personal favorite Coen brothers film is still ''Miller's Crossing''.
Look in ya heart, Tommy.
@@jodi2847 What heart?
Miller's is easily better i think, the plot, the dialogue, the action is all perfection
I also think Fargo is perfect.
"my personal favorite Coen brothers film is still ''Miller's Crossing''."
Yeah ... well ... y'know that's just like uuhh ... your opinion, man!
Honestly one of the best movies I’ve seen. Amazing script and incredible acting from all involved.
best soundtrack ever ...
Crazy how bill burs enthusiasm for films has just given me a new way of think of anton chigurs character ❤
I watch this movie at least once or twice a year. The Tommy Lee Jones opening dialog is a masterpiece in itself.
It’s a great film but they are just following the book by Cormac McCarthy. He’s the real genius
Exactly.
The screenplay is damn near VERBATIM from the novel.
Watch Millers Crossing or Fargo then... They are legit top of class.
All the Pretty Horses is a great book. Not a great movie. This movie could have been a mess too.
Saw the Coens interviewed on Charlie Rose after the movie came out. They told Charlie they invited Cormac to see the screening of the final cut. Charlie asked them how he reacted to it and they said they heard him chuckling from time to time, apparently liking what he saw. Otherwise didn’t say much.
I like to think Anton is supposed to be Death.
That's what I think all the coin tosses are about. The closest Tommy Lee Jones comes to Anton is in the scene at 2:24, where he finds the dime on the ground that Chigurh used to open the vent -- that dime is face up, a heads, the camera does a close up on the coin to show it.
Totally. He’s a dude that just appears, does his job using a farm tool and his haircut even resembles a hood.
He’s destiny. Which is also chance.
I could listen to Bill Burr review movies all day!
Underrated the Coen brothers
Ok, Yoda
0:28 That’s awesome, I have a 69 F150 that my grandpa won new with a camper back then in a Wheels Afield magazine trivia contest, out of many entries. We used to take the camper all around the U.S. on family road trips, to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite.
whiskey on the rocks and NCFOM. Thank you ole’ Billy Cueball
I remember when I first saw No Country For Old Men when it was a comedy called Raising Arizona.
The ghost / Grim Reaper theory is strengthened by Chigurh's lack of shadow as he drinks milk in the trailer. In a way, the Sheriff fears the end of his life and dreads meeting Chigurh.
Great video, just subscribed. Good fckng movie. Coen bros always entertain. Some are greater than others but always a fun ride. No country is one of the greatest Westerns of all time.
The book is excellent as well. That performance by Javier Bardem is outstanding. The best psychopath performance ever. Even the small parts were excellent. The characters bring the book to life.
NCFOM released on 4K Bluray Dec 12
Ol' Billy Bowl-cut
films like this I can only watch once
Damn bill sounds like he's coming talking about this movie
If you live Javier Bardem? Watch The Dancer Upstairs. Brilliant, brilliant actor. Amazing. ♥️♥️♥️
The Coen's worst movie is better than 99.9% of all other directors' best.
It’s cool how you pull these tidbits out of Burr’s rambling basement podcast stream of thought.
Weird coincidence… I watched this a week or two ago, then the next morning I saw the EXACT same Ford on the side of the road on my way to work.
I LOVE my 74 F250 highboy
Great movie
Dialogue.
Not superheroes, cgi, captain America b/s.
No social justice crap.
Good freaking dialogue.
Yes, Bardeen was a devil-like character not a real person. But a Devil-like figure is a common Cohen trope: Blood Simple (Viser), Raising Arizona (Smalls), Miller's Crossing (Bernbaum), Barton Fink (Meadows), Hudsucker Proxy (Aloysius), Fargo (Grossman), Big Lebowski (Treehorn), O Brother (Cooley), The Man Who Wasn’t There (Executioner), Intolerable Cruelty (Myerson), The Ladykillers (Dorr), No Country for Old Men (Chigurh), Burn After Reading (Olsen), A Serious Man (Ableman), Inside Llewyn Davis (Cowboy), Hail, Ceasar! (Smitrovich).
I named one of my kids after the Coen brothers. They have a lot to answer for.
What did you name em, Joel, Ethan, or Coen?
I named by son after the Wochowski Brothers. Boy did that backfire.
Wait, he actually thought they were still releasing films on VHS in 2007.
And after wearing out several DVDs he's not sure the title of the film.
To be fair, VHS only stopped the year prior
I know it was necessary for the plot, but every time I watch the scene with the cop on the phone I'm internally screaming "Why would you be seated with your back to an obvious crazy person??"
He's right about the Coen brothers. Raising Arizona? Fargo? Barton Fink? True Grit? They are right up there with Scorsese and Speilberg, nearly as good as Kubrick.
Spielberg isn’t in the same class as the other directors you mentioned. One masterpiece: E.T., plus several very good films.
@@todesque fair enough. Kurosawa then. Although you should give Close Encounters another watch.
@@todesqueagree wholeheartedly. He’s a master at making a bigger than life Hollywood cinematic spectacle (pre Marvel and D.C.),but not in the same class as Kubrick, the Coens and Scorsese. Too much gee whiz with Spielberg, for my taste. There are some less prolific directors that I think are much better, too. Peter Weir, Alexander Payne, Paul Thomas Anderson, to name a few
Now I feel the movie should officially change its name to "No Country for Old Man" just to confuse Bill further.
2:16 saddest part of the whole movie.
Was he talking about Jacksonville Oregon?
No Country was the most scared I've ever been in the movie theater, not in Halloween or Silence of the Lambs way where you're scared by what's happening, but in a 3D way, where I thought Chigurh was going to kill us in the theater. When Llewelyn is running from Chigurh after the hotel shootout and he gets in that guy's car and then Chigurh starts pumping bullets into the car, I ducked so low in my seat. And every subsequent bullet made me duck lower because I thought bullets were going to fly out of the screen and hit me.
That night I was walking up the stairwell at my parents' place and I kept slowing down to try to see around the corner because I thought dude was going to show up.
haha pussy
I hear you but no movie ever scared me like The Exorcist. I was 13 at the time and I was afraid to go in my room and fall asleep for months. Thought my bed was going to start shaking the devil was coming for me. Totally traumatized
Call it.
What am I caowlin' on?
Alright then. Two of 'em. Both had my father in 'em. It's peculiar. I'm older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, first one I don't remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he's gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up...
I'm pretty sure he drives a Prius
Dirty Harry or No Country For Old Men. I'll take them both thank you 👍
read da book -- movie gets it, but there is more great soliloquizing by the sheriff in the book
Captain ... CAVE MAAAAAN!
Good analysis by Bill. Also, he's right if people aren't naming the Coens in their top 3 American directors. For me, there's Kubrick, the Coens, and Scorsese.
Agreed!
Bill is right, listen to him at least Ford Motor Company
bro said vhs 💀
👍👍👍
Bill Burr is a riot. Yes he also gets the movie in a way a lot of people don’t. Lot of other cookies I’m sure that he mentioned throughout the podcast. Blood Simple,TBL, Man Who Wasn’t There, and O’Brother Where Our’t Thou are all CLASSICS.
I would pay money just to chill for 2 hours with Bill Burr watching No Country for Old Men with a bottle of bourbon.
This movie is brilliant because it doesn't spoon feed you information... you just have to connect the dots.
Thats what people say which is TRUE
He's definitely talking about Scorsese and Tarantino.
Of course Burr is right. :)
I'll go one further; the Coens' best movies are often their least popular ones. Everyone appreciates the genius of Fargo or Miller's Crossing or The Big Lebowski. But Burn After Reading is an absolute gem. O Brother Where Art Thou. The Man Who Wasn't There. Just brilliant movies that were simply too smart for the average cinemagoer.
Bill needs to booze.
why censor this shit
Lame, muted bullshit
I remember hating this movie when I first saw it just because of the killing of Brolin's character off screen. I'm fine with stories where the main protagonists die, in fact some of my favourite films of all time have tragic endings, but not actually showing the death I felt robbed me of some closure with the character. Although unique, I kept thinking "how do you do that? Is that even proper writing?" It would be like if at the end of Saving Private Ryan ***26 YEAR OLD SPOILER ALERT*** instead of actually seeing Tom Hanks' Captain Miller dying we just get it mentioned in a conversation between Matt Damon and Edward Burns' surviving characters.
Over the years I've rewatched the film many times and came to enjoy it, especially for Javier Bardem who has become one of my favourite and most respected actors, but not being able to see the complete character arch of Moss still bugs me.
Most overrated movie
FOR YOU.
@@rotyler2177 you keep expecting the movie to go somewhere then it just ends
@@JM-cf9xy can you get the chicken crates out of the truck?
@@rotyler2177 dont even know what that means
@@JM-cf9xyyeah it’s supposed to make you feel unsatisfied, that’s part of its brilliance. No Country is a modern western that establishes but then subverts genre rules. It’s about society and the world as a whole changing. It is no longer the country that Tommy Lee Jones knew. Based on my interpretation of your point, the kind of movie you want is the old westerns. You wanted the confrontation to occur between Moss and Chigurgh, but that’s the old world, this is the new one. The movie successfully made you feel cheated of a satisfying conclusion, that was the point. If that upsets you, that’s fine, it’s not a movie for you. But most people love the movie because it’s about that very dissatisfaction. It’s more realistic, sure, but it’s also more thematically resonant to have Moss fail, to have the sheriff fail and accept that the old old world is gone.
Great movie but a terrible ending
I'm one of the few who just thinks this is an ok film, nothing special. Miller's Crossing, Lebowski and Fargo I much preferred. The supposed tension in this film wasn't really there for me. Maybe a cliche, but just a slight musical score might've helped a bit. Was hyped to watch it as well. Can't like em all, I suppose
No Country is a period peace. There were no ‘84 trucks in the scene because it was 1980. He says how long the coin had been “traveling” and what year was on it in the gas station scene, establishing our year.
He didn't say 84 trucks. He said 1980 ford trucks.
Bill is talking about the movie extemporaneously…can’t expect him to have researched the exact release date of each truck appearing in the film.
Yep, the only problem with Burr's headcanon there is that it robs Chigurh of any threat or agency if he's just a figment of TLJ's sheriff's memory. And Josh Brolin would have gotten away with the money as well.
Nah cause Brolin's ultimately killed by the Mexicans
But Brolin's character wasn't killed by Chigurh, he was killed in the motel by the Mexican cartel guys that found him through his wife and mother-in-law.
@mrquirky3626 true, but without the delays and interruptions caused by Bardem's character, he would have time to escape with his missus.
Martin Scorsese on " El fontanero, su mujer y otras cosas de meter " ( 1981 ) ?
My explanation for the ending begins with the scene with Ellis (Barry Corbin), where Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) says that he felt that when he grew older, God would enter his life, but he never did. The person who did enter his life was the specter of Anton Chigurh, who Bell thinks overmatches him.
In the end Bell is haunted by dreams of his father, in one his father passes by him on horseback on a dark and cold mountain pass, he goes on ahead forging out the path and using a fiery horn to light the way ....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_... God (in the image of his father) has now entered his life and is leading him from the coldness of the night (the evil of humanity as personified by Anton Chigurh)._
For people who like good movies NC4OM is terrific. It just subverts your expectations so perfectly.