CINEMISSES! No Country For Old Men

Today Matt and tackle a light-hearted summertime romp, a film that some would even call the "feel-good movie of 2007!" That's right, it's the Coen Brothers' award winning masterpiece – "No Country For Old Men." The boys will explore the plot and themes of the film, the Coen's unique approach to storytelling and filmmaking, even a little bit about Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the original novel. And because it's a story about a crime gone bad, there will be plenty of talk about how "No Country" connects to another Coen Brothers' masterpiece, "Fargo." There's gonna be blood, guts and a whole lot of near misses. Should you listen? Hold on, I'll flip a coin. Call it, Friendo.

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Transcript

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Confessions
02:30 Exploring 'No Country for Old Men'
05:03 Character Analysis and Themes
07:51 The Coen Brothers' Style and Influence
10:41 Production Insights and Challenges
12:55 Critical Reception and Awards
15:33 Cast Highlights and Performances
18:12 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
24:23 Character Insights and Casting Choices
28:37 Plot Development and Key Scenes
45:03 Themes of Determination and Consequences
47:09 Exploring Fargo and Its Impact
47:56 The Terrifying Nature of Anton Chigurh
49:44 Consequences of Violence in No Country for Old Men
51:08 Character Dynamics and Foreshadowing
53:57 Sheriff Bell's Reflection on Fate
56:45 The Coin Toss and Moral Dilemmas
58:30 Fate and Consequences for Anton Chigurh
59:20 Final Reflections on No Country for Old Men

Tug McTighe (00:00)
You're listening to Cinemisses, a podcast about movies that one or the other of your two hosts just never got around to seeing. I'm Tug.

Matt (00:07)
And I'm Matt, reminding you that anybody can make a podcast about movies they have seen. We are here because we haven't. Thank you for joining us on Cinemisses and Action.

Tug McTighe (00:16)
Hi buddy, very good. Okay. I have a confession to make. I would like to make a correction to something I vehemently argued in our last recording when we did sinners. I ran my mouth about the fact that how would Annie know all this vampire lore about you have to be invited and the garlic and the steak you push back. Cause I made the argument that what shit.

Matt (00:21)
okay.

Okay, I remember.

Tug McTighe (00:45)
Dracula with Bela Lugosi only came out the year before this movie was set and you're like well There were vampire stories and I go yeah, but it took the years to create these tropes. I was wrong. I Went did a little research so I appreciate your immediate pushback Turns out all those tropes came from Slavic myth or were connected to old religion or people just didn't know anything about science and like Matt dies

Matt (00:55)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (01:09)
Right? You get the cholera and die and then our crops fail and you're like, well, old Matt, he came back and fucked up the crops. Right? So they're just, but I went and did this, like all of it, the garlic, the steak through the heart, they have to be invite, all of it, it has its basis in the old myths. Now I will give Bram Stoker credit. The no reflection in the mirror was his

Matt (01:27)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (01:33)
So I do want to back off. want to retract my earlier comments. Now you might be wondering what this confession and correction has to do with our, with the movie we're about to talk about. Well, I'm to tell you, you know, who doesn't back off or change their behavior or apologize for anything. The two main characters of today's movie, no country for old men, Anton Schroeger and Llewellyn Moss go.

Matt (01:53)
Who's that?

Right?

Tug McTighe (02:02)
the way They do not apologize. They do not say you know what hold on I Was wrong. I just murdered all these Mexican drug dealers That's my fault Maybe I've gone too far. They do not say that so no country for old men Excited to talk about this as always we asked the person who hasn't seen the film The cinema sir what they think they know about this movie Matt. That is you so giddy up

Matt (02:11)
Maybe I've gone too far.

But no.

Okay, so the answer to what do I think I know about it is actually less than I thought I did. I got it into my head at some point that a movie came out maybe five years ago called No Blood for Oil. And it was about a serial killer who's on the trail of an oil man for some reason. And now I'm 100 % sure I conflated there will be blood and no country for old men. Neither of them came out five years ago, by the way. They were in fact.

Tug McTighe (02:30)
Okay, beautiful.

Ha ha!

Matt (02:53)
released like 19 years ago into an amazing movie that doesn't actually exist. Right, I feel like we could put something together. Meanwhile, I did remember Javier.

Tug McTighe (02:59)
I gotta tell you, it sounds alright.

No blood for oil is

a great fucking title. ⁓

Matt (03:09)
Yeah, exactly.

But they came out the same year and I think they were both highly regarded and one was Paul, Paul Thomas Anderson. Right. So just in my, in my head, I just got him confused. I did remember Javier Bardem. Did I pronounce his name right? ⁓ Javier Bardem as a scary dude with a bad haircut. He was very iconic looking. And I do remember that.

Tug McTighe (03:16)
Thomas Anderson who just won. Right. He had a big night like, yeah, like cougar did. it's great.

Yeah, I think it's Javier, but yes.

Matt (03:36)
It was a bad haircut, but not as bad as the one I had throughout my entire childhood.

Tug McTighe (03:39)
Well, the

late 70s and early 80s were tough time.

Matt (03:43)
That's a whole episode right there for me. So I knew almost nothing.

Tug McTighe (03:45)
Yeah, for sure.

Okay, well that's great. that gave me a real, real, real laugh. Okay, let's go with the log line. When a Texas welder stumbles upon a botched drug deal and takes a suitcase full of cash, he sets off a violent chain reaction pursued by a psychopathic hitman and a disillusioned sheriff as the landscape of crime changes in 1980s West. So this is in tech, the middle of sort of just desert Texas.

like 1980, 81, something like that. Man, it's even, and even the film transfer look, right? The color is hot. I remember in the very first scene he's hunting and I'm like, God damn, he's wearing boots and jeans and a flannel. I'm like, gotta be sweating. Jesus.

Matt (04:16)
I thought they nailed the look of the 19, or least 80s, late 70s.

I immediately

was trying to figure out what year it was, because the cars are so prevalent, automobiles are so prevalent in this movie.

Tug McTighe (04:44)
Right Right,

This is a 2007 Neil Western crime thriller written directed produced and edited by Joel and Ethan Cohen Aka the Cohen brothers based on Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel. So this was quick a couple years after the novel came out

Um, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin. Again, film is set in the desert landscape of, of 1980 West Texas, which as you know, from anybody who's driven like from Kansas city to LA, you know, you go South so far South and then West and they're like, well, you're in the middle of nowhere for a long time. And this movie takes place in one of those middle of nowhere locations.

Matt (05:31)
Speaking of being in the middle of nowhere, I wondered was this Josh Brolin's comeback movie? And the answer is that it was. He auditioned for the role that Johnny Depp got in 21 Jump Street and lost it. And he was on an ABC Western Young Justice or something for three seasons. That got canceled. And then I remember when I was still working at Callahan, I was listening to some podcast.

and they had people like him on and he was talking about what he'd been doing. He was just trading stocks. That's all he did for five, six, seven years.

Tug McTighe (06:04)
We brought this up a little bit. I'm glad we're sort of now we're in our, know, this is sort of like a double feature here with Brolin because we brought it up a little bit during weapons where he just had this child actor success. Most notably, everybody remembers him as the older brother in the Goonies and then straight disappeared.

Matt (06:24)
Yeah, very Travolta-esque almost, his folder is no plug for a decade.

Tug McTighe (06:26)
a long time. Yeah, Travolta had a 10

or 15 year period where it just couldn't get a phone call. So very, very interesting trajectory for Ol' Brolin. And once again, Coen Brothers, we'll talk about this. It revisits the Coen Brothers, the things they return to over and over again, the themes of fate, conscience, circumstance, people in over their heads that don't quite know they're in over their heads.

Matt (06:49)
and

Tug McTighe (06:49)
people

to think they have it all figured out when they don't have a goddamn thing figured out. They started doing this with blood simple, which is awesome. That's 84 that came out, which I couldn't believe raising Arizona. One of my favorites. then most notably sort of, would say the bookends of this kind of movie is Fargo from 96 and then no country.

Matt (07:11)
I love Fargo and it transcends the genre. So they have the same themes, whether they're making a comedy, a black comedy, a thriller, neo-nor crime, you name it.

Tug McTighe (07:19)
That's correct.

Like the Hudson Croproxy

is a movie about business, but all of this is present So just so they're so oddly delicious the Coen's That that and I'll say this again, so I'll just spoiler alert Not everything they do is great. Everything they do is interesting Everything news is worth seeing in the theater or watching everything's worth watching. That's for sure So again, the movie follows three main characters Llewellyn Moss, that's Brolin

Matt (07:43)
Absolutely.

Tug McTighe (07:51)
He's a Vietnam war veteran, a welder. He comes across this botched drug deal and finds I think 2 million bucks in a suitcase. Anton Shagor, that's Javier Bardem, who is just a horrifying hit man who is like a machine, who he's been hired to recover the money. And then Ed Tom, Ed Tom Bell, Tommy Lee Jones, and another just beautiful old man performance. He's a sheriff investigating the crime. So Woody Harrelson shows up later.

Stephen Root shows up for a minute. He's in a lot of Coen Brothers movies, if not all of them. So I was glad to see him. I don't know a ton about Woody and I should because Woody's been around forever.

Matt (08:23)
How much do you know about Woody Harrelson?

Okay,

so check this out. In the book, Cormac McCarthy mentions a federal judge that's killed by a hitman. Woody Harrelson's actual father was a hitman who went to jail for killing a federal judge.

Tug McTighe (08:41)
Yes, Phil!

That's 100 % correct, he's told that story.

Matt (08:47)
Yeah, and he has like no relationship with him and I think his mom had all sorts of problems and so forth. yeah, his dad was a killer for hire, his actual father.

Tug McTighe (08:58)
Good gravy.

All right, so how'd it do, Matt?

Matt (09:03)
Tomato meter, 93%, pretty good. Popcorn meter, 86%. And again, back to what you said, I don't think they're gonna always be 100 % on the popcorn meter. People will be like, yeah, I just didn't get that one, but always interesting. So that's pretty good.

Tug McTighe (09:06)
Pretty good. Pretty good.

always interesting.

premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on May 19th, made 171 million bucks on 25 budget. So that is a lean budget for a big sprawling movie. Not a ton of characters, but it kind of travels all over Texas, gets down to the border, back to Odessa, et cetera.

Matt (09:31)
pretty good.

Yeah, the cast was pretty tight.

Tug McTighe (09:44)
At the 80th Academy Awards, eight nominations tied with There Will Be Blood. It went on to win four, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ethan and Joel. And they don't adapt a ton. That's usually an original story by them. And then it won a bunch of Golden Globes. It won a lot.

Lots to talk about. There's a gigantic body count in this, Matt. And you uncovered a unique fact about said body count, didn't you?

Matt (10:14)
Yeah,

I this was fun. The Coen brothers were surprised at a certain line item. They're like, why did we spend $800 a gallon for fake blood? Well, and they realized there's that scene at the beginning where Josh Brolin finds all the drug dealers, it's drug deal gone bad and everybody's dead and they're all covered. There's blood everywhere. Well, as you know, typical Hollywood fake blood is just made of corn syrup and food coloring.

Tug McTighe (10:31)
Right. They're bloody and starting to decompose. Yeah.

Matt (10:41)
And if they had used that regular fake blood, they would be covered with insects and scorpions and god knows what else. Yes.

Tug McTighe (10:46)
just ants and you're right, fire ants. How was the

shoot? Pretty good. We needed to buy a lot of calamine lotion.

Matt (10:52)
Right, so

instead they had to spring for the good stuff that does not use sugar to keep the insects away.

Tug McTighe (10:57)
so funny

you're like what we're way over on our blood budget so producer scott rudin who is very famous he was

Matt (11:01)
Our blood budgets is through the roof.

Yeah, for a producer,

he's like a name. When I saw it, was like, Rudin, why do I know that guy? He's done tons of stuff, like all over the place.

Tug McTighe (11:14)
Yeah, he's the name guy. He's

one of our few e-gots, Matt. That's Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. So that's hard to do. Bought the film rights to Cormac McCarthy's novel. Rated up the Coen Brothers flagpole. They wanted to jump on and write and direct. And they just love that Joel said the book's unconventional approach was familiar to us.

Matt (11:21)
Right?

Tug McTighe (11:41)
We're naturally attracted to subverting genre, which you will talk about, I'm sure. The bad guys never really meet the good guys. McCarthy didn't follow through on the formula expectations, which they don't either.

Matt (11:45)
understatement.

Right. That's I think what appealed to them in the first place.

Tug McTighe (11:57)
So then the Coen's wrote it mostly faithful they they get points for being pretty faithful to novel they adjusted when necessary as always you can't it's you can't make a book just like the book it's just not

Matt (12:08)
I

think more than anything, they pruned it down. They took out a lot of dialogue. So they really slimmed it down.

Tug McTighe (12:12)
Okay, yeah, there was, we'll talk about that in a minute. A lot of introspective

gazing and looking and thinking in this.

again, this is kind of Coen Brothers.

wheelhouse, right? This is kind of in there a crime, some unsuspecting people. It's very ordinary. Like it's not

Grandios, it's just this dude finds a bag of money. He goes on the run and bad things start to happen.

Matt (12:42)
Right, and when they talked about adapting a Cormac McCarthy novel, they said, why not do the best one? So that's what they did. All the Pretty Horses in 2000 was a Matt Damon Penelope Cruz movie and it bombed. Yeah, $18 million made against a $57 million budget. that didn't do well, but this one did really well.

Tug McTighe (12:49)
Right. Yeah.

I read that book, I never saw that movie.

All right, so Josh Brolin discussed the Cohen's directing style in an interview. And listen, the other part is due to SAG and the Directors Guild rules, they had to say in the credits, written by Joel and Ethan Cohen, directed by Joel Cohen, produced by Ethan Cohen, finally now, they're as written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen. They are in it together.

It's not one of them directing and the other hanging around producing. It's their writing, directing, producing, and editing together. They are kind of a hive mind in that regard. So he.

Matt (13:43)
They have used

a known diploma of Roderick Janes in the past to represent both of them for the reasons you mentioned.

Tug McTighe (13:47)
As their editor? Yeah.

Brolin said they, they only really say what needs to be said. They don't sit there as directors and manipulate you and go into page after page and try to get you. They just sort of ask you questions, talk to you about it, and then say action.

Matt (14:07)
And trust you to do it. Yeah, it reminds me actually of your creative approach. Not micromanaging. if you've got something that makes it better. You said that the first time I met you, I think you just got into a conference. If your input makes something 10 % better, you're going to give it if it doesn't do that, you're not going to give it.

Tug McTighe (14:22)
No, no, we're not, we're not picking, let's not pick Nits here. Yeah. well thank you for that. I'll take it as a compliment. ⁓ Brolin said in an interview, we had a ton of fun making it. Maybe it's because me and Javier thought we'd be fired. Cause our demo was like, I don't like, I don't know why you put me in this. I can't speak English. I don't like violence. but, but it, ⁓ I can't drive. and he said, it's funny with the Coens there's zero compliments.

Matt (14:28)
You should.

Can't drive.

Tug McTighe (14:49)
Zero anything. No, nice work. And then, and then he goes, and then I'm doing this scene with Harrelson and Woody can't remember his lines. He stumbles his way through it in the cones like, my God, that's great. So like they want it to be normal and they want it to be, I think weird and a little bit unsettling left of center or right, you know, just, they don't want it to be down the middle. That's not what they're interested in.

Matt (15:10)
Yeah. Yeah, no. And

I think they'd rather kind of step back and let people do what they do. I've seen, Robin did that the other day. I was at my desk doing some illustration stuff, which to someone that doesn't do it, it looks like magic because you're doing key commands and you're sending stuff to the back and you're making things disappear. And I know what I'm doing, but it's nice to sometimes have people that are impressed to see you do what you do.

Tug McTighe (15:25)
Right, right.

Right, very much so. The title is taken from the opening line of Irish poet William Butler Yeats poem, Sailing to by his Antium. Fun fact. And then again, we talked about this a little bit, Matt. They keep coming back to the same kinds of themes of fate and of longing and needing and not being able to get it. They love crime. They love weird behind.

the scenes dealings, loved crossing and double crossing and triple crossing. And this had so much in common with Fargo, right? There's an old wise police chief in both movies. There's these local, just regular old cops who aren't used to seeing this shit, seeing these terrible crimes.

There's cold blooded murderers. There's a guy, know, Llewellyn gets in over his head. Jerry Lundergard is so in over his head. He doesn't even remember the alias. He checks in to the hotel within the end when they're like, Mr. Anderson. And he goes, who? ⁓ sorry. Yeah, like he just so Sean hates him. He hates that character so much because he's so dumb. ⁓

Matt (16:25)
Ha

Jerry Leonard.

Bill Macy

was so good though. But yes, like you said, it's characters that gradually realize they're in way over their head. Jerry is a great example. Can we talk about the Coen brothers for a minute? ⁓ It's as prolific as they are, and as much as we like their work, I'm surprised it's taken us 27 episodes to get to one of their movies. So Joel is three years older than his brother, Ethan.

Tug McTighe (16:40)
so great. But yeah.

Please.

I know, is that funny?

Matt (17:03)
They were born and raised in Minneapolis, a suburb which feels about right. You see that reflected, I think, in their work, especially in Fargo.

Tug McTighe (17:09)
For sure, for sure.

Well, yeah, but there's a lot of that stoic Viking, with all apologies to my Minnesotan and Michigander friends, but that Northern, like Tripp Shakespeare's one of both our favorite bands, and they say about in snow days, say, Mrs. Braintree, you're a chilly Northern woman. And it's just, there's a lot of that in their work, and they live in Chile.

Matt (17:30)
Yeah

Yeah,

how many people do you know that saw Fargo and wasn't familiar with the cities or the state of Minnesota and thought they were making fun of them? And I said, this is not making fun of them. This is an accurate representation of what you get in Brainerd.

Tug McTighe (17:43)
The

No, 100%. And you're from

Iowa. If you go even north of Iowa, you're starting to run into it for sure. No, it's accurate.

Matt (17:51)
⁓ Yeah, you're good. ⁓

So Joel went to NYU's film school and then I think briefly grad school in Austin because he followed a girl out there and then they broke up. So he didn't finish that. I don't think Ethan got a philosophy degree from Princeton. ⁓ So by the. Yeah. So when he was finishing at Princeton, Joel was a P.A. on Evil Dead with Sam Raimi and learned a lot with him.

Tug McTighe (18:12)
Two dumb guys, right?

I actually knew

that. Yeah, I remember that now.

Matt (18:21)
Yeah, and they actually, the movie Spies Like Us, both of those guys are in it. Raimi and Joel Cohen have cameos in Spies Like Us,

Tug McTighe (18:26)
being spies like us, that's a

Thai family, underrated classic.

Matt (18:30)
The film debut was Blood Simple, which I now want to watch. ⁓ Raising Arizona really established them as kind of a tour, you know, outside the box filmmakers. They've made black comedies like Barton Fink, gangster movies like Millers Crossing, even not terribly successful screwball comedies, HUD sucker proxy, but they were definitely going for something. ⁓ And hard to define movies like Fargo. And I think one could answer or one could argue this one. They're always taking risks.

Tug McTighe (18:34)
It's great, you should see it.

Yep, yep.

100%.

Matt (18:58)
Always great actors. Frances McDormand is married to one of them, so she shows up a lot, which is great. The ones that I like the best are the ones that take these characters that have nothing in common and really should never interact and by a twist of fate, or more likely one character's bad choice, they all come together and you get this compelling story.

Tug McTighe (19:03)
Yep. I think.

Right.

I think, you know, now you were talking about this. I, if I'm, I'm 99 % sure Barry Sonnenfeld was the DP on raising Arizona. I'm pretty sure. And right. He, he, that the look of that, you can then see that in all of his work, that look and feel and oddity. And like, I'm thinking of specifically the scene where Randall Tex cobs is the stranger on the motorcycle.

Matt (19:29)
I think you're right.

Tug McTighe (19:44)
and that when the baby gets kidnapped, he rides the motorcycle and it's his point of view and then he rides it up the ladder that high into the bedroom and the camera goes zooming up this ladder and then the mom's like, ⁓ right? So it's just interesting shit. But yeah, they're always doing something cool and trying something. Like you said, even if it doesn't quite work, it's still super awesome.

Matt (20:09)
Yeah, credit for this.

Tug McTighe (20:11)
So critical response, as you can imagine, it won all those awards. It was very well regarded or is very well regarded. Javier Bardem became the first Spanish actor win an Oscar, so good for him. Now Javier Stilgar Bardem, he's Paul Atreides' siege leader in the Dune films by Denis Villeneuve. ⁓ He said in his acceptance speech, thank you to the Cone's for being crazy enough to think I could do that and put...

Matt (20:27)
Right? With Josh Brolin.

Tug McTighe (20:34)
put one of the most horrible haircuts in history on my head. So back to the haircut. Just an interesting character, interesting actor playing this weird character.

Matt (20:44)
Right, according to a January 2018 article in Business Insider, a group of psychiatrists studied 400 movies, identified 126 psychopaths in those movies, and Javier Bardem was, as Anton Sugar was, in their opinion, the most clinically accurate portrayal of the psychopath.

Tug McTighe (21:01)
He was the number one. He won

me. If you want to know what a psychopath is, it's this.

Matt (21:07)
Yeah, and to his credit, I think he did. The film won a ton of awards. There's too many to name, but you can all look them up. ⁓ But Bardem did win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, which was pretty great.

Tug McTighe (21:13)
Yeah. Yeah. It was a.

Yeah.

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Matt (22:17)
Awesome.

Tug McTighe (22:18)
Why don't you jam us on the cast here?

Matt (22:20)
Yeah, let's jump into that. So a pretty tight cast, but a great one in my opinion. First off top build was Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. He had less screen time than Bardem or Brolin actually. Nope, but still pretty bankable. And this was a kind of comeback for him.

Tug McTighe (22:34)
Yeah, he wasn't in at the time.

He had a nice run right in the late 90s. The fugitive, I remember, kind of his one of his big. Yeah, yeah, just. And he was an actor right in the 80s too. I mean, he was he'd been around, but again, a little bit of this. They seem to have that Tarantino tries it does it to where they seem to have this ability to go. You know who'd be great for this is Tommy Lee Jones. We haven't seen him in the movie in 10 years, but let's bring him out and see what he can do here.

Matt (22:47)
It was in everything, in US Marshals and Space Cowboys and the Ren and Lap.

Right.

It's revitalizes things. As we said, Javier Bardem as Anton Sugar. His haircut was based on a photo of a brothel patron from 79. And when he saw it, he said, no, I'm not going to get laid for two months. And the Cohen brothers high five each other, because they knew he would look just as creepy as they wanted.

Tug McTighe (23:29)
I need to know where you find the brothel photos Actually, maybe I don't need to know to be to be honest Yeah, way that The second you look at brothel stock calm you an image of your IP address goes to a small office in Washington, right? Get you getting paying for that one for sure

Matt (23:32)
I don't know.

brothel stock, I assume there's like it's a stock photography site, but it's all brothel related.

That's right. You get a knock on your door from ⁓ Child Protective Services.

Tug McTighe (23:51)
Josh Brolin, Llewellyn Moss, you talk about Brolin again a little bit.

Matt (23:55)
He was not in contention for the role, but he really wanted to be in a Coen Brothers movie and thought he'd be great for this one. So he went to his friends Robert Rodriguez and borrowed a camera and Quentin Tarantino there was there and said I'll just direct your sizzle reel. So that's pretty good. So that got him in front of them. They thought it worked. Yeah, they initially wanted Heath Ledger for it and he was unable to do that. I think we mentioned.

Tug McTighe (24:13)
Well done, Josh. You picked the right team.

Okay. That might've worked.

Matt (24:23)
Yeah, Woody Harrelson is Carson Wells. So again, I thought this was a five year old movie until I saw Woody Harrelson and I thought, wait, this must be older than I thought because he looked pretty young and he was. Kelly MacDonald is Carla Jean Moss. I thought she did a great job in the book. Llewellyn Moss was, I think, 32 and she was 19. So it felt like there was a real age gap in there. There was.

Tug McTighe (24:29)
Right. Wait, this must be older.

Yeah, for sure.

Matt (24:50)
I thought she was great.

Garrett Dillahunt is Wendell, the sheriff's deputy, I believe. I know you've got ideas for that guy, but.

Tug McTighe (24:56)
⁓

100 % yeah, no, I'll take I'll give it to you cuz I saw I saw his face and I'm like that guy's been in some shit, but not that much shit but he's very recognizable and he was in a Raising cane or something. There was a TV show he was in like a sort of 2000 sitcom that ran for 33 episodes or something. He was the dad

Matt (25:01)
He's a pretty good mad guy.

Right.

Okay.

I

remember him, was I think in season six at justified. He was a bad guy. Anybody on justified?

Tess Harper's Loretta Bell, Barry Corbin. So this is your, as Ellis, this is your recommendation for that guy.

Tug McTighe (25:34)
Yeah, he was my contender. Yeah, Maurice

Minifield from Northern exposure among hundreds of other. He was the main army guy in 1983 War Games Whopper the computer. ⁓ But he's been in so much. think maybe he's he may have transcended out of that guy and just like Steven Root is next.

Matt (25:49)
Yeah, he's been in a ton of stuff. He was we just finished watching The Closer. He was a Kira Cedric's dad, so.

Yeah, right.

Tug McTighe (26:03)
He, even

with Steven Rood, he's not that guy.

Matt (26:06)
What's your favorite Steven Root roll though? Jimmy James.

Tug McTighe (26:07)
Jimmy James on news

He had the greatest line in the history of news radio where he gave Dave the amount of money that that Dave was gonna give out for bonuses that he had the budget and He said you come up with the plan. I'll stand by it. It'll be great and Dave comes up with this complicated rubric of Because of this because of that and and Jimmy James Stephen Rooker's day of that sounds great. It's a perfect idea Do you want to hear what we're gonna do?

Matt (26:37)
You

Tug McTighe (26:37)
That was just, that was the first time I'd ever really seen Steven Root was a news radio. Sadly underrated and under streamed sitcom.

Matt (26:41)
Yeah, me too. And he was really good in that.

Tug McTighe (26:46)
I

Roger Boyce as the sheriff. He was great. The one sheriff that's friends with Ed Tom. ⁓ A handful of other folks that, know, Carla Jean's mom and a poolside woman. The poolside woman was great. Yeah. And then that was her on the pool, right? Yeah. She was offering him a beer.

Matt (26:51)
Mm-hmm.

I liked her. yeah, she died. She was murdered.

She looked like she would have been a lot of fun. Hey, let's hang out and drink beer by the pool today. I don't know you, but let's do it. That was rough.

Tug McTighe (27:07)
No kid, he's like, I'll go with Ice Jest. Right.

So again, lots of interesting cast stuff. Bardem tried to take himself out of this. After he was cast, had back, there were scheduling problems. He was like, I just can't get this done. It's not right for me, et cetera, et cetera. Mark Strong was put on standby. His English, you would know him. You guys will know him if you look up Mark Strong.

they are. But again, yeah, hard to imagine anybody other than Javier in this.

Matt (27:41)
Yeah. Oh, this is interesting, by the way, Josh Brolin had gotten in a motorcycle accident like two days before shooting. So his shoulders broken, he's like, I'm not going to be able to do this, but it turns out his character got shot in the shoulder for most of the movie, so they just did all that stuff. So it's a lesson. Funny story.

Tug McTighe (27:57)
So they just, yeah, they just got it. Yeah. Here, we'll work it in. ⁓

Yeah, again, quick shout out to Anna Reader. Nice one scene she's in, poolside woman.

Matt (28:08)
and Gene Jones as the gas station guy, because that was a pretty powerful scene.

Tug McTighe (28:12)
Unbelievable.

that one maybe is what got Bardem the Oscar. That scene. Yeah.

Matt (28:18)
Oh, for sure. And

that gas station is the same gas station that appears in the movie Red Dawn from 1983 or whatever it is. Yep.

Tug McTighe (28:26)
Okay, Wolverines, when the

Russians take over and the high school students have to fight them off, led by Patrick Swayze. Gigantic cast.

Matt (28:33)
There you go.

Rest in peace. Yeah, it was. We should do that one. All right. Well, why don't we jump into the plot?

Tug McTighe (28:37)
All right.

OK, in 1980, hit man Anton Sugar is arrested in Texas. He escapes by strangling the sheriff's deputy and stealing a car by killing the driver with a captive bolt pistol. So that is the bolt that they put on a cow or a steer's head and it's air and they hit the trigger and it just shoots out like five or six inches and punctures their brain.

And then sucks back in. So there's just this tiny little hole and it's awful. And we've never seen anything like it. Certainly not used on a human. And boy, boy, what a fucking opening scene here. Right. Yeah, in case you were wondering, Matt, hey, is this one of the Coen Brothers funny movies is not.

Matt (29:16)
Yeah, he gets a lot of use out of that captive bolt pistol.

At the beginning of the movie, seemingly unstoppable sugar is inexplicably in custody of a deputy who seems like he's not great at his job. ⁓

Tug McTighe (29:35)
Yeah, he doesn't know what

he he doesn't know what the thing is. He doesn't know who this is or what's going on.

Matt (29:39)
And you actually see Sugar in the background as the deputies on the phone stepping through his handcuffs so he can go murder.

Tug McTighe (29:46)
Yeah, he's just handcuffed

him and he's right. And then he garots him with the handcuffs.

Matt (29:50)
Yeah, so they explain in the book that where Shigeru is having a conversation with Woody Harrelson, Carson Wells, where he tells him that he allowed himself to be arrested after killing a man outside a diner to see if he could get out of custody. So that was pretty amazing. And the scene that we mentioned too with the gas station attendant was pretty amazing.

Tug McTighe (30:10)
Okay, so Lou Ellen is out hunting pronghorns in the desert. He comes across the aftermath of this drug deal gone wrong. He picks up this blood trail. He shoots this whatever he's shooting pronghorn animal and yeah, he doesn't kill it. He goes, God damn it. But he sees he wounded it he starts to chase it down the track it. He sees this blood and he comes across this.

Matt (30:25)
Yeah, he's got a rifle.

Tug McTighe (30:35)
Horrible scene of a shootout where all these people are dead one guy is still alive and he's bleeding out and he sees the blood trail and he He sort of starts to piece together this well, he almost he pulls that you done piece together tug he pulls the tarp up and there's a shit ton of cocaine in the in the bags in the bed of the truck and he's like and he just keeps going like hmm, huh? Hmm, and then he follows the trail and he sees this guy

who's dead under a tree and there's the suitcase and he opens it up and it's just full of packs of hundred dollar bills. So a shit ton of money.

Matt (31:11)
Yeah, it's 2 million bucks.

Right.

I know Cormac McCarthy wrote this, but this feels like something that the Coen brothers would have written themselves. So Moss has the money. There's nothing to trace any of this to him. He goes back to his double wide where he lives with his, you know, with his young wife, but guilt makes him go back. It's like, gotta go back and try and save this guy. If you hadn't done that.

Tug McTighe (31:33)
He wakes up in the middle of night, yeah.

Because the guy in the front seat

of saying I'll go I'll go I'll go

Matt (31:40)
Right. Also, he says, shut the door, there's wolves. if you, that's what the guy is saying. So if he just said, forget it, I don't care, and let him die, because then he's back there and the guy's dead anyway, but because he's the kind of guy that would shoot an animal and fail to kill it, so would go finish it instead of just dying, we know that he's a good person. He saved the cat. So now he's going to have to go back and save this guy. And that's where all his troubles.

Tug McTighe (31:44)
Right, right.

I think you get the way right, Right.

Right. Right.

And

again, we made one bad decision that kicked off this whole chain of events. great shot to where he parks on that ridge and he keeps looking back and he sees his truck because it's down sort of in a bowl where the drug deal is going on. And then he fucking looks up and there's another fucking car there and you hear them slash his tires and he's like, I'm fucked. And he is, in fact.

Matt (32:30)
Right.

Right.

Tug McTighe (32:36)
So he escapes by diving into a river. He gets shot in the shoulder to your point. The dog is the pit bull is chasing him, right? He shoots the dog. Yeah, even once people escapes in the river gets back home. Carla Jean will explain this to us later, but she knows who he is and she's he's like you need to go stay with your mom. Well, what's she going to say? I go out and give a shit what she says. You need to get out of here and she knows he's in trouble.

Matt (32:45)
It's always sad, even when it's a pit bull.

Sugar is hired and I'm not exactly sure who the guys are, but I assume drug dealers dealing with the Mexican drug dealers ⁓ to get them.

Tug McTighe (33:10)
Yeah, I think it's the

the guys that Steven Root represents, the Americans hired Shigure.

Matt (33:14)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (33:17)
The Americans were buying the drugs to distribute them here. They hire sugar to go retrieve the money. Not hire him, by the way. Bad hire. Bad hire.

Matt (33:23)
Yeah, to get the money back. ⁓

Right, because he murders them at the site of the drug deal. So I thought that was, I didn't feel too bad about that. And then we're introduced to Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, aka Tommy Lee Jones. And he thinks this all looks very...

Tug McTighe (33:31)
Yeah, they get murdered in the end. Yes. Yes.

Matt (33:44)
suspicious, but I felt like was 100 % checked out of his job. Even from the start.

Tug McTighe (33:49)
He 100 % was.

He didn't want any part of this. He's in this small town where ostensibly nothing much ever happens. And then he's closed, right? He doesn't say I'm getting too old for this shit, but it's all over his face. And he refuses the call a couple times. They're like, do you want to go look at the FBI? He's like, no, I'm good. I'll drink my coffee. I don't need to know what happened.

Matt (34:00)
coasting through retirement.

Right.

Great.

It's okay. ⁓

Tug McTighe (34:18)
100%.

Matt (34:19)
So sugar goes to Moss's trailer home and I was wondering how he even knew to go there. But we find that out later. He uses his air pistol to shoot the door lock. He does that quite a bit. That's kind of his MO. Meanwhile, Moss takes a taxi to a motel because he knows he can't be at his house because people are going to come looking for him. He hides the money in the air duct.

Tug McTighe (34:40)
in the

yep, and he pushes it back and kind of around the corner uses the stick from the closet. Now we'll come back and it's pretty smart. You know, he's very he's he's cheeky. Yeah, he's clever. He's clever. No, he's not. No, he's no, he's clever. So he goes to get

Matt (34:48)
Yeah. Which was pretty smart. Yeah. That was pretty smart.

Canning, yeah, I like that. He's not just some dumb, he's not Jerry Lundergard. Right.

Tug McTighe (35:06)
some new boots because he took them off and when he was diving in the river and he sees that the curtains of his room are in a slightly different position. So he's like, fuck. And then he. Learns what we learn. There's a tracking device in the money in the suitcase. ⁓ He doesn't know this yet. He finds it out later. Sugar has the little receiver.

Matt (35:24)
Right.

Yeah.

So the Mexican drug dealers are tracking him and Chagura is tracking him and them. So Chagura makes short work of those guys, but doesn't find them.

Tug McTighe (35:32)
Right. Right. Right.

So the Mexican

drug dealers were waiting for Lou Ellen. Right.

Matt (35:40)
Yeah.

So he gets away and he had a second room.

Tug McTighe (35:43)
Because the

drug dealers do not know that sugar has been hired to track everybody. Right.

Matt (35:48)
Right.

Yeah. So we have more knowledge than anybody else. And meanwhile, Moss, Llewellyn Moss has another room that's adjacent that allows him to get the money out and he takes off again. He's so we know that he's a welder, but also ex-military, right? He was in Vietnam. He's just living in a trailer with his wife. I think he got greedy because there was two million dollars. But you do get the sense that it's he's not completely outmatched.

Tug McTighe (36:02)
Yep. Yep.

Matt (36:15)
Right?

Tug McTighe (36:15)
No,

Ben, think great point about he's not Jerry Lundergaard who didn't think this through. He's thinking everything through. He's and we'll get we'll get to the there's a continuing theme here of of almost got it right. Moments. They almost got it. He almost did it. Sugar almost got everybody almost got it done, but nobody really gets it done. So.

Yeah, again, he's an interesting, smart guy. But like you're saying here, man, you're like, sugar is almost like a super, super villain. Yeah, he yeah, he he has his own belief system. And I was hired to do this job. I'm going to do this goddamn job. And I don't care how many people have to kill.

Matt (36:49)
Yeah, he's like a force of nature.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you're almost almost made it reminds me of the case of money. So if you think back to Fargo, they had a similar, if not the exact same case of money. You remember that they I think it's the semi I don't remember who hides it by the highway.

Tug McTighe (37:10)
Correct.

Yeah,

after he gets shot in the face, goes out and he, and it's like 180 degrees of snow and he buries it and then he puts like a two inch stick. He's like, that's going to market.

Matt (37:26)
Right, and then of course you never get back to it. That money is gone. So a lot of things that just, if only they'd worked out, they would have worked out, but they just don't.

Tug McTighe (37:28)
He never gets back. He does not.

Yeah.

So now we meet Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells because he's now been hired by Steven Root, who we learned hired Shagur later. He's now been hired to chase down Shagur. Yeah, he's a bounty hunter. So what a good brother shit here.

Matt (37:52)
Yeah, he's a bounty hunter. Yeah, I like their dialogue.

Yeah, this is good back and forth.

⁓ So Moss is then in Eagle Pass at another motel and finally discovers.

Tug McTighe (37:59)
All right, so, yep.

By

the way, motels get a get a A plus. Great character, a bunch of motels in this movie.

Matt (38:08)
yeah.

Did

you find yourself looking at the invoice when he checks out the room to see what they cost and it's like 26 bucks a night? They're like, wow, when was this amazing? But he had to be wondering, like, how does this guy keep finding me? And finally, he finds the transponder. I think even what he says, you know what a transponder is, I don't I know what a transponder is. I'm not an idiot.

Tug McTighe (38:16)
24 bucks or something, yeah. What a dream.

Right, right.

Yeah, yeah, little, just a little.

Right,

right, I'm not a moron. So he discovers the tracking device, Sugar's already there, of course. Their gunfight spills out onto the streets, badly wounding both and killing a truck driver. And then Moss flees to Mexico and he throws the case into the weeds between Mexico and the US, on the Rio Grande. Now it's also interesting to know, I can't imagine how much that hurt.

Matt (38:45)
that was brutal.

on the side of, yeah.

Tug McTighe (38:58)
When Chagor blew the cylinder out of the lock with the air gun and it hits Moss in the, yeah, in the chest and he's bleeding and he's just like, shit. And he throws the case out the window and jumps out the window. And again, it's a series of near misses this whole movie. Cause earlier we, we saw the sheriff and his deputy. Sugar comes in right to the double wide Carla jeans gone and the well are gone. And he goes in the fridge and.

Matt (39:03)
⁓ cut it in the chest or Cool.

Tug McTighe (39:28)
goes in the fridge and starts drinking milk. then Sheriff Ed Tom gets there with his deputy and he goes, look at this. He goes, he took a sip of milk. He goes, it's still sweating. So he's like, we just missed him. So there's a series of, and then Llewellyn Earp, Ed Tom takes a drink of the milk too.

Matt (39:30)
Right.

Right.

He's

still not in that big a hurry. like, you know, what's this? What with this milk being here?

Tug McTighe (39:48)
Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, he doesn't want

to be any closer to him. ⁓ But again, so. Moss he goes over to Mexico. Shagur goes in and is an expert at cleaning his own wounds. His legs messed up from where he got shot and he's cleaning his own was he went to the drug store and stole these supplies. This is that famous scene from the trailer that they showed a lot where.

Matt (39:53)
Right.

Tug McTighe (40:12)
He, you see Shagor, there's a pharmacy there. He tears off a piece of his shirt. He gets a stick. He dips it, pushes the stick into the gas tank of a car, wetting the shirt with gas. He sticks it in the gas tank and lights it. And then he turns around and walks into the, and it's all done in a single, he walks into the drug store and you see the car blow up and all these, the windows blow out and all these people freak out. And he doesn't even blink.

So that was the distraction he caused. And he steals the alcohol and the surgical stuff and the scissors and the, it's really, yeah, really crazy. And it reminded me, Matt, of a scene in Fargo where Bushemi and Gar, Gar Grimel, or Grimelson or whatever, who they're, they're getting Jerry's wife, they're kidnapping her and she bites his finger.

Matt (41:01)
Hmm.

Tug McTighe (41:07)
And she runs away and he goes, ungent. need ungent. And he goes into the bathroom and gets like Neosporin to put on the bite. And that's when she's hiding in the shower. But nonetheless, that just reminded me of in the middle of a gun in the middle of a gunfighter at kidnapping, the, the bad guys are very concerned about infection.

Matt (41:19)
Okay.

Yes, no, as they should be. And yeah, Shigeru is operating on a different level where he has no prob, he's not worried about collateral damage. Is this gonna kill somebody? Is this gonna destroy property? He just, he needs a distraction and he needs to get stuff to fix himself up and he does it. That was a really, so he's had, when you think of the iconic moments of this movie, there's two right there, you know, the coin toss and then this one.

Tug McTighe (41:37)
Irrelevant.

yeah, friend. the coin toss and then this explosion and back to your back to your theory about Ed Tom Yeah, he's doing everything he can do To not go and get deeper involved in this he he was at the diner the DEA wants to have us come out. Yeah, I'm good And then he does so he sort of he sort of sighs and it's like shit. I'll go see Carla Jean down in Odessa

Because everybody knows everybody in this town. So he he he Goes and is a cute scene where he Is talking to his assistant at the police station and he goes do not call my wife until I have quit the building Because she's gonna try to talk me out of this he goes she goes you want me to wait like a half an hour in color He goes, please do so Really interesting again, you get you get a lot with the Coen's

Between these nondescript we haven't even seen her before But we know it's it's all lived in I guess is what I'm saying. She's real. He feels real the place feels

Matt (42:51)
It felt very authentic. agree 100 %

and yeah, every time he was on screen. kind of felt like is he going to die in this scene? But here's the thing they didn't know. They didn't know he was out there like how all the people that are following each other don't know about the people that are following them. But he was kind of the end of it. He was the tail end.

Tug McTighe (42:59)
Please don't kill him. He's six weeks away. Yeah.

No, no.

No, that's correct. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah So Carson Wells the bounty hunter woody visits moss in the mexican Hospital he's in Offers him protection in exchange for the money, but moss refuses and he's impressed he goes, know who's following you and he tells him he goes you've seen him and you're not dead Like wells knows shagur really well. and again just another great cohen brothers

bit of dialogue between these two. This scene is awesome. I it's the only scene they pair.

Matt (43:38)
Yeah,

yeah, both of them were kind of like who's got more bravado than the other one between Brolin and Woody Harrelson. I you really thought he was going to make it out of this live and I think he did too. He just assumed he'd be fine. ⁓ I think it's hard when it's Woody Harrelson because he's so Woody Harrelson and everything. He's Woody Boyd from Cheers. He's just he's just him. But I thought he was really good for this role.

Tug McTighe (43:50)
He, yep, yep. He said.

Right, right.

Me too. Me too. If it's it suits him, right? And again, they're experts at that. Like them putting John, John Totoro in as Jesus, the Jesus in Lebowski for what's he in there for two minutes, three minutes. they're experts at that. Right. ⁓ but again, I want to give you a quick theme alert theme of the movie alert. he says, you're not what he says. You're not cut out for this. You're just a guy who happened to find those vehicles.

Matt (44:08)
Right.

Right.

gone. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (44:31)
And again, it's then we cut to Ed Tom, the sheriff and Carla Jean, and he tells a story about a bull and a rider and a steer, a steer and a rider. goes, even in the context between man and steer, it ain't certain. And, Carla says, Lou Ellen will never quit. He will take on all comers. You don't know him like I know him. And now we know, now we know that Lou Ellen won't quit. And we know that sugar won't quit.

Matt (44:52)
This was a shift.

Tug McTighe (44:57)
And I didn't look, this may be close to the midpoint, right? Where there's no turning back. The character is irrevocably changed. Lou Wellen is to the death, that's correct.

Matt (44:57)
So this is real.

Right.

Crossing the Rubicon. ⁓

I felt like at this point in the movie, I remember thinking, well, hang on. All these people can't be right. Right? Like she says, Llewellyn will never quit. Chigurh's never gonna quit. Woody Harrelson says, you can't beat this guy. And Llewellyn Moss says, yeah, I can. I'm like, well, somebody's gonna be disappointed here and I don't know who it's gonna be. For sure.

Tug McTighe (45:18)
Right.

Yeah.

Someone is going to lose. Correct.

Matt (45:35)
I think you

talked about characterization with them and I think you're right. The Coen brothers, the characters that they create are my favorite part of what they do. Like Llewellyn's doing pretty well, but the sheriff's right. He's just a guy who's in over his head. No matter how barely he is, maybe he's, the water's an inch over his head, it's still over his head. In Fargo, Jerry Lundergaard, not a criminal mastermind, actually kind of an idiot.

Tug McTighe (45:53)
Yeah.

No, no, not

Matt (45:59)
But when he gets it in his head, like, I'm just gonna do this. I'm gonna set up this fake kidnapping and it's gonna work out great and I'll get money. He doesn't think about any of this, and two hours later, there's a bunch of corpses.

Tug McTighe (46:12)
there's a really chilling I watch Fargo not too long ago, Matt. There's a really chilling line of dialogue from Jean. Jean is the wife in Fargo. Jean's dad, the rich guy, right? And Jerry goes, hey, this deal could be a really, really great deal for Jean and Scotty and me. And he goes, Jean and Scotty don't have to worry about anything.

Matt (46:26)
Yeah.

Gene and Scott are you taking care of? Right.

Tug McTighe (46:40)
Not you, fuckstick.

I'll kick you to the curb the second I can.

Matt (46:46)
But again,

the father-in-law, also a guy that got in over his head and didn't realize it. And what happened? He showed up for that meeting and he ended up getting killed by Steve Buscemi.

Tug McTighe (46:51)
He thought he had it, you bet. ⁓ you bet. Yeah. Yeah. And then great.

All right. Now we're not talking about Fargo, but another great scene when Jerry comes up on the debt is dead father-in-law and it's a big wide shot and you just see the trunk pop open because he's going to put the dead body of his fucking father-in-law in the trunk. He's in so far. Unbelievable. God bless. ⁓ I did. You mentioned the suitcase season one, episode one.

Matt (47:09)
Right. and then he does the...

was amazing. Now, did you watch any of the shows, the series?

Tug McTighe (47:20)
with Billy Bob Thornton of Fargo the series, they find the briefcase.

Matt (47:23)
Yes.

Yes, and Martin Martin Freeman, right? Yeah, that was they weren't all great seasons, but some of them were really good. Yeah, the John Hamlin was really good.

Tug McTighe (47:27)
That kicks off that plot line. Yes. Yeah.

Some of them were really great. Yeah. I,

yep. Really liked it. I love the one about the, the family, the Viking mafia versus the Kansas city mafia. That season was great. Yeah. Anyway. So also when Ed Tom is talking about cattle and stuff, he figures out, it's an, it's one of those bolts. That's how he's doing this. Cause they'd been talked about that a little bit. So

Matt (47:43)
Yeah. Yeah, I thought that was a good one. Yeah. So anyway, everybody should watch that, but.

Right.

Tug McTighe (48:01)
Sugar ambushes Woody Harrelson at his hotel. He is terrified.

Matt (48:05)
walking

up the and I'm like, here it is again. This guy's screwed and he's just, he all of a sudden realized, wow, I'm really in trouble.

Tug McTighe (48:08)
Yep. Yep.

I'm really in trouble and he starts bargaining for his life. The phone rings, sugar, sugar a couple times, like no look shoots people. Like he's been terrorizing them for a minute and he looks away and then just pulls the trigger. So he casually shoots him. He did that with, yeah, it's like a giant silencer. He does that with one of the Mexican drug dealers who's hiding in the.

Matt (48:31)
His gun's almost like a sci-fi weapon. It's like, got a silencer on it and a...

Tug McTighe (48:40)
Shower he pulls the shower curtain then anyway Just the depths of him are really really scary here So he takes a moss is calling Woody Harrelson To try to talk about the money etc. And again Sugar is frightening, but maybe Llewellyn is terrifying. He tells sugar I'm gonna make you a special project Llewellyn says

Matt (48:48)
Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (49:01)
He still doesn't think he's gonna lose.

Matt (49:01)
Right,

right. And he's bargaining with his wife's and mother-in-law's lives at this point, but he's like.

Tug McTighe (49:08)
Yes he is. Because he tells him I'm

going down to Odessa because he was looking at her phone bill. Odessa, Odessa, Odessa. Right.

Matt (49:12)
Yeah, he knows where to you know,

you know why I'm going right? And he's like, Yeah, I know why.

Tug McTighe (49:16)
Right. So a pretty funny scene. Funny as funny as it gets here in no country for old men's third act, but he he's in a fucking hospital gown and boots. He's bloody. He ran away from the hospital and the border guard is like, you're not getting in here. Only Americans get in here. And then he got looked at him. goes, well, I was born and blah, blah, blah. goes, you serve in Nam and he goes, yeah, two tours this and that. goes, all right, veteran coming through.

Matt (49:23)
Great.

Hahaha

Tug McTighe (49:44)
So.

You know, he's he's in terrible shape Lou Ellen is the Coen brothers don't They don't shy away from showing there's no You can't jump out of a car In a Coen Brothers movie and be fine. You can't get shot in a Coen Brothers movie and be fine. You are wounded you are Yeah, you are really hurt

Matt (50:02)
Yeah, there's real life consequences to this.

I appreciate that about their movies. And we talk about how it feels real, how it feels authentic. That's part of the reason. I mean, when you see Chigurh and he's picking pieces of shot out of his leg, you know.

Tug McTighe (50:16)
Yep. And Lou Ellen keeps

changing the bandage and he keeps looking at it like, shit, I'm bleeding. Yeah.

Matt (50:22)
Yeah, I mean, he got

he really took they really took some damage and I like a lot of movies where it's like somebody gets shot and they just shrug it off and you know, five minutes later, it's like they never got shot at all. This is not that.

Tug McTighe (50:30)
Right. No, this is not. Yeah, this is not that

Yeah, they are not superheroes So moss Lou ellen goes and gets the case from the weeds in the Rio Grande Ranges to meet Carla Jean and El Paso He's gonna give her the money and tell her to leave This is when Shagur pays a visit to Steven root does not go well for Steven root ⁓ There's another dude in the office

Matt (50:52)
Right.

Tug McTighe (50:55)
like a young worker and he goes, you going to shoot me? And sugar says, that depends. Do you see me?

Matt (51:00)
Right?

I hope the guy said no. But yeah, again, Steven Root. I don't think he ever thought this was gonna come back to haunt him, but.

Tug McTighe (51:03)
Yeah, right. ⁓

Not the way, yeah, this is not end up the way he hoped it would. Then Carla Jean and her mother are in a cab to the bus station, they're heading to El Paso. We see the Mexicans tailing them, because the Mexicans know. Carla Jean, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Carla Jean's very supportive. Carla Jean's mom is very supportive. I told you not to marry him, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the Coens love to put these quick characters in these movies. We talk about the gas station guy, Frendo.

Matt (51:19)
He comes to help her with her bag. He's like, where are going? What hotel are you staying at? She's like, tell them.

yeah.

Right.

Tug McTighe (51:38)
She's only in here for two scenes and she's a real person that you understand her motivation and she only has three lines at the Ford on dialogue, you know, but they're great at this. then again, she just gives up the ghost in three seconds to the Americans. She goes, I didn't know when the Mexicans at where

Matt (51:53)
yeah. Like all, everything Llewellyn

did to try and cover their tracks are undone in one second.

Tug McTighe (51:59)
Yeah

And and you know, then there's the woman Right the pool woman who hits on moss and they got a great Cohen brothers piece of copy that's foreshadows what's gonna come next. she goes you keep looking around We're looking for your wife goes. I'm looking for half half my wife and I'm also looking for what's coming She goes. Yeah, but no one ever sees that

Matt (52:07)
Mm-hmm.

Wow, impression.

Tug McTighe (52:25)
so again, Carla Jean's mom has told the Mexicans where, where they're going. again, close misses Ed Tom knows where he is too. He finds him. He is pulling into the parking lot of the motel as the max he hears the gunshots, the Mexicans jump in their Jeep and they drive away and he goes into the room. Lou Allen is, is laying dead.

on the motel room floor in an unceremonious offscreen death.

Matt (52:52)
Right, killed off screen.

That was so disappointing. And I wondered I mean, he had just this gaudy yellow and red cowboy shirt. And I thought, is that so when we see him dead in the next scene that we'll know it's him? Because I'll be honest, I was waiting for an Night Shyamalan twist where it wasn't really him and somebody else had his clothes on and he somehow survived.

Tug McTighe (53:08)
That was bright.

Right.

He's yeah, he's kidnapped someone because he keeps going back that store and buying how the boots working out pretty good as you can see I need everything else Right and then again like I've been saying the whole movie is Llewellyn is here shakers right behind him the Mexicans are right behind Shagur and Bell's right behind the map like Near misses almost in real time, which is pretty awesome

Matt (53:17)
Spoiler, he did not.

Right.

Tug McTighe (53:41)
Carla Jean gets to the hotel. It's a crime scene and Ed Tom just takes off his hat and she just starts crying. Tommy Lee is just really good at this. You said earlier, not a lot of dialogue, a lot of just quiet moments. Just he's great at that too. He's got such a face.

Matt (53:46)
Right.

Sheriff Bell returns to the crime scene after he talks to his lawman friend.

Tug McTighe (54:01)
Great, great scene between that sheriff. And this is really the no country for old men. We are not built for this. Because he's old too. His buddy's old, right?

Matt (54:08)
Right. Yeah.

So he mentions that Shiger, like a serial killer, is going back to the crime scenes.

Tug McTighe (54:18)
Yeah, he goes, can you believe this guy? He's crazy, he keeps going back to the crime scenes.

Matt (54:18)
⁓ so.

So the sheriff goes, Bell goes to the hotel room and we see Sugar on the other side of the door holding a gun. we're like, so again, I was like, now this is where Tommy goes. Right, he the locks been blown out. Well, it turns out he was there earlier. He's already gone. We see the old air duct trick. It's been opened. You see the air duct grate is on the floor and also a dime.

Tug McTighe (54:29)
Yes. Yes.

and he sees the lock has been blown out.

Matt (54:47)
because we saw at the other motel, Schragura used a dime as a screwdriver, because he didn't have a screwdriver. So for dumb people like me who are confused, this is, here's what actually happened. Sheriff, yeah, by the way, he's not there right now. So Sheriff Bell just kind of sits on the bed and realizes that he missed it.

Tug McTighe (54:48)
He was using Yeah, he used the dime.

Hahaha!

Get it? Get it? Did you get it? Yeah, I got it.

Just size, right?

right. And again, it's the old switcheroo like in Silence of the Lambs where he's not on that. He's on the other side of a different door.

Matt (55:15)
Yeah, that's when he goes to.

Tug McTighe (55:17)
⁓ And the different

door he's on, right? The different door he's on the side of is Karla Jeans. Yeah, cuz he's not done. Sugar's not done.

Matt (55:23)
Right.

Tug McTighe (55:28)
So this is when we get to see Barry Corbin, Maurice Minnifield. Ed Thom goes and visits. I feel like it's his uncle or as one of his daddy's good friends, Ellis. And he's just really coming clean. And Ellis was an old marshal or a lawman in Texas as well. And Ed Thom says, I am retiring. I got to get out.

Matt (55:32)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (55:56)
Ellis is why and he goes I just I feel overmatched All this violence It's it's different than it was Ellis tells him a story. It's like it's not different It's it's you you you just think it's different and he says look, this is your fate. This is your reason for being he says you you can't avoid fate and Only vanity makes you think otherwise. He said he says the violence is not new fate is not new

It's not all waiting on you, man.

Matt (56:22)
That was a really great exchange and I'm pretty sure it was taken almost word from word from the book. So definitely worth again, another one of those very satisfying iconic moments. And then back to sugar Carla Jean returned from her mother's funeral to find sugar waiting in her bedroom. He says he has to fulfill his vow but gives her the opportunity that he gave the man at the gas station to flip a coin kind of like two-face right from Batman.

Tug McTighe (56:46)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Very much so. Yeah. And he, he's, have to fulfill my vow. Good Lord, man. You won. He's dead. You have, he's dead. You have the money. It's all right. and, and yeah, that's right. That's right. And, Carla, no, she goes, I'm not going to call it. The coin doesn't have any say only you hit man.

Matt (56:56)
This is why, yeah, that's why he's so dangerous.

This is why he's a psychopath. He's got a crazy code that he lives by even when it makes no

Tug McTighe (57:15)
can be responsible for my fate. And he says, she says, you don't have to do this. He goes, goddamn, everybody says that. You don't have to do this. I do have to do this. And then we cut to him opening the door and checking the soles of his boots to make sure he didn't step in any blood. So that's another horrifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He murdered her and got away and.

Matt (57:21)
Right.

So you gotta wait clean until seconds later.

Tug McTighe (57:41)
And

fate a fucking car wrecks into him T bones. I'm gonna stop sign He has a compound fracture these kids ride up on their bikes the kid goes hey mister You got a bone sticking out of your arm and he goes how much for the shirt? He's still driven right? Yeah, gives him a hundred bucks but he faked Fate death if you want to almost keeps almost catching up with sugar

Matt (57:55)
Yeah, he gives me 100 bucks, I think. ⁓

Tug McTighe (58:06)
trying to kill him, but he keeps escaping. Like I said, just like Bell was one step behind in the whole way. And then he walks away. He takes a kid's shirt and ties a sling around his broken compound fracture arm and just walks off. Don't tell anybody I was here.

Matt (58:19)
But it's

not done. I mean, if fate comes for all of us, then it's coming for him at some point too. So he made it out one more time, but next time he might win.

Tug McTighe (58:24)
That's correct. Very much so.

Yeah,

that's correct. Speaking of making it out one more time, you need Little Bear to keep making it out with your branding. If you've ever seen No Country for Old Men, you know one thing for sure. Anton Chagird does not mess around. Everything he does is precise, calculated, clean, no wasted movement. And honestly, that's just how Little Bear Graphics approaches design, without the murders of course, Matt and team are a small, ridiculously talented design firm that builds websites, design logos, creates

Matt (58:37)
Fantastic.

Tug McTighe (58:57)
branded merch, social graphics, A whole deal, friendo. No fluff, no nonsense, just work that hits exactly the way it's supposed to. You don't want your brand looking like it wandered into the wrong desert town with a briefcase full of cash and no plan. You want to look sharp, intentional, and impossible to ignore. So if your website feels outdated, or your logo looks like it lost a coin toss, go check out LittleBear.Graphics. Clean design, smart strategy, there is no country for bad branding.

Matt (59:20)
Awesome.

Tug McTighe (59:21)
So Shagur has walked away. Llewellyn is dead. Carl is dead. The mom is dead. The mom died because she had the cancer. Ed Tom retires. He had that little scene where he talks about his dream. We didn't talk about that. He talks about his dream where he's riding horseback through a snowy mountain pass. His father's there. He's ahead of him.

I think he's symbolizing that like, you know, Ed Tom's gonna pass from this earth, but it's the passing of one age to another. You bleak? Yeah, it's bleak. But it's Cormac McCarthy. If you ever read The Road, you should. ⁓ Yeah, it's bleak. Yeah, really interesting. So all right. What do you think, sir?

Matt (59:56)
Mm-hmm.

Right. If nothing else, I was inspired to read Chromack McCarthy after. So, yeah.

Okay, I loved, first of all, talking about this. ⁓ And I liked so much of this movie. After the cinematographer for Sinners last week won the Oscar for Best Cinematography, I realized more and more as we watched these that I can appreciate a beautifully photographed movie. ⁓ And I can appreciate lighting and score and costumes.

Tug McTighe (1:00:14)
Me too. Great movie, man.

Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (1:00:35)
and framing and the pacing of the story, all of these things that come together to make a movie that really looks great. It's, know, we make t-shirts, right? Little Bear makes t-shirts, among other things. And part of it is what you put on the shirt, but at least half of it is how the shirt feels. Like you can't pick a cruddy, 100 % cotton, boxy, heavy, stiff shirt and put the world's most beautiful shirt design on it and people are still gonna wanna wear it.

Tug McTighe (1:00:58)
Sick. Yeah.

Nobody want right.

Yeah, every. Sorry, I'm cutting you off Neil Sharma, my mentor and boss at DG used to say every detail communicates.

Matt (1:01:09)
Yeah, so, and I realized too how hard it is to make all these elements come together to be really good. So I thought the cast was pretty much perfect. I was surprised, which is good, but disappointed when Llewellyn got killed, especially since he got off, killed off screen, because I feel like he our proxy in the story. We were him. ⁓ I like to think there's a parallel universe where Cormac McCarthy wrote a book where Llewellyn beat Sugar.

Tug McTighe (1:01:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right?

Matt (1:01:34)
and

didn't get murdered off screen by Mexican drug dealers, but in this universe, this is the movie we got. And it gave me a lot to think about, even a week after I was still thinking about some of these.

Tug McTighe (1:01:42)
Yeah.

That and that's the right. That's the sign of a good movie and a great story and a well played. Hey, you know what you mentioned score. There's almost no score in this. It's almost no music, which like I didn't notice until there's a little bit of music in the background in the drugstore, not in the gas station, rather the friendo scene. And I'm like, holy shit, has there been no frickin me almost no music in this, which just the real sounds of the desert and the cities. Crazy.

Matt (1:01:47)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, actual sounds that they recorded if

they were filming. That is amazing.

Tug McTighe (1:02:12)
Alright, so, CineHit? Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (1:02:15)
yeah, it's kind of a downer. It's unsatisfying

in at least one way, but 100 % a Coen Brothers movie and one of their better ones. I still love Fargo, but I like this one for the same reason I like Fargo.

Tug McTighe (1:02:25)
Yeah,

hard to hit the bar of Fargo. It's almost a perfect movie. Yeah, for me too, like I said, I remember liking it back in 2007. I really liked it this time. I was really taken by it this time. They're always making interesting stuff. This is one of their best. It's also one of their bloodiest, Matt. I did a little research. According to the internet machine, the total body count is generally cited between 25 and 42.

Matt (1:02:28)
Yeah, it's pretty high bar.

Great. You've matured.

That's a lot.

Tug McTighe (1:02:53)
Depending

on whether off-screen deaths and implied kills are included, which I would most dedicated kill count analyses land around 30 and shagor is responsible for the roughly 11 to 13 of those deaths. So this guy went on a 10 plus person killing spree in West Texas over. I don't know 72 to hours three to four days

Matt (1:03:16)
Yeah.

And then just walked away with a broken arm, but walked away nonetheless.

Tug McTighe (1:03:19)
Watch me with a compound fracture.

Matt (1:03:22)
Ready? One, two, three.

Thanks again for listening to Cinemassage. If you like what we're doing here, please help us grow the show by subscribing, sharing some episodes or writing a review. It really does help us and even better, tell somebody you think might like to give it a try. And we want to hear from you, so follow us and comment on socials. You can drop us a line at cinemassagemail.com with ideas to improve the show or recommendations for movies that you would like us to cover.

Tug McTighe (1:03:48)
Matt, what is our next cinemass and what does our cinemass think he knows?

Matt (1:03:53)
Okay, the next cinemass, which my good friend Steve Foster will appreciate is the Guy Ritchie movie Snatch. You have seen it a long time ago, you said.

Tug McTighe (1:04:04)
I saw

it a long time ago. It'll be like a new viewing for me.

Matt (1:04:07)
I have not seen it. I have seen The Gentleman. ⁓ So I have a little experience with Guy Ritchie movies, but all I know about Snatch is that Brad Pitt is in it and I believe he is largely unintelligible.

Tug McTighe (1:04:11)
Yep, that's a good one.

He is largely unintelligible. He plays the gypsy and there nobody can understand what he's saying.

Matt (1:04:28)
I think he made it up. That's my understanding. It's not even a real language.

Tug McTighe (1:04:30)
Yeah, I'm going to also I'm

going also tell you that this is that Guy Ritchie English British language stuff. So you may want to turn the subtitles on.

Matt (1:04:42)
This one titles

It'll be interesting to see if I, one of the things I liked about The Gentleman is, and maybe this is just that movie or maybe he does this all the time, but the movie started at the end and made you think something happened and then ran it back a couple days and you saw everything that led up to that and realized that what happened is not what you thought happened. So that was pretty fun. If you haven't seen The Gentleman, watch it, but we'll see if this is similar. I'm eager to see it.

Tug McTighe (1:04:55)
Right.

Yeah, all right. Snatch is coming next. That's no country for old men. I'm glad we did that. I can't believe it took us that long to do Cone Brothers, but I'm glad we did.

Matt (1:05:14)
Yeah, and I wonder if we need

to. I wonder if we need to do a Paul Thomas Anderson at some point in our future. Alright, well thank you for joining us. As always, I'm Matt.

Tug McTighe (1:05:18)
Probably do probably do.

I'm Tug, and that's a wrap!

Matt (1:05:25)
So long. That was good.