I thought I'd start a new thread so those of us who have seen the movie can talk about it without spoiling it for everybody else. First I'll comment that this week's New Yorker has a Shouts and Murmur's piece that is basically a spoiler for the whole film. I read 2/3rds of it before I realized it though. Then I thought wait, this is a spoiler for the film I'm going to see tonight so I was a bit miffed. I only get to see movies rated above PG every couple of months or so. Boo Nora Ephron.

Anyway, back to discussing the movie. I was not disappointed by the ending. I thought 'Wow, they didn't go all Hollywood on us. I guess only the Coen brothers get to avoid that.' I haven't read the McCarthy novel but from what I've read about it he uses the notion of randomness vs. causality as a central theme. How much do we really determine our own lives? How much does luck/randomness influence it? But also the question of what would it take for us to basically throw what we have away (as Moss's character does)? Tommy Lee Jones's character does that too now that I think about it.

I thought the shot sequence at the end completely telegraphed the car accident - stoplight, rear-view mirror POV, stoplight, crash. As soon as I saw that green light I knew there would be an accident. I was mildly surprised that Bardem's character survived it. I suppose I might have liked the ending a bit better if he was either dead or incapacitated by the crash, 'killed by randomness'.

I think Jones's character, Ed Tom, had reached the end of his abilities to continue his life as he had lived it so far. Something from the book that's not in the movie (and I only know this from a plot synopsis) is that he was haunted by actions he took in WWII, actions that won him a medal. So, we have a guy who can't keep being what he has been but doesn't have a plan for the rest of his life either. Perhaps not interesting but very real.

At first I thought we might be getting a bit of redemption for Anton (Bardem's character). Despite everything we've seen him do we have Carson Wells's (Woody Harrelson) statement that he is a man of principles. We see a glimpse of that in the short scene with Carla Jean. He's come to kill her because he said he would. Everything else has gone his way, he got the money, Moss is dead, the powers that be that wanted to take him out are dead. But in his mind, Carla Jean is unfinished business. I wish we'd seen just a bit more of the discussion because she is right in that scene. Randomness may determine our lives but it does not mean that we don't have choices. Anton could choose to 'do the right thing' in this situation and not what he promised because all the parameters have changed. He doesn't (I think that's the significance of him wiping his shoes) and he goes beyond redemption at that point. I'm not sure if Ed Tom is beyond redemption but I think he thinks he is. Moss goes beyond redemption when he does not give himself up to save Carla Jean. We get no redemption. I just recently watched Woody Allen's Match Point and I'm struck by some similarities in the themes. Hmmm. Of course Match Point is Crimes and Misdemeanors II with the Woody bits cut out.

What do I mean by going all Hollywood on us? Well, we don't get the 'big showdown' scene between Moss and Anton (Chigure?) or even one between Ed Tom and Anton. That would have been going all Hollywood on us. Is that what those of us who were unsatisfied by the ending were missing?

I closed my eyes for a significant portion of this movie because the violence did get to me but I'm not sorry I saw it.