Corrected entry: When Moss discovers the transponder in the pack of supposedly $100 bills, most of the bills are actually one dollar bills.
Corrected entry: The laws of physics dictate that for any action there is an equal opposite reaction. Anton Chigurh uses a high powered air gun that defies the laws of physics. It fires a powerful enough blast to blow out the cylinder of a lock. There should be a powerful kickback. The lack of a kickback is most obvious in the scene where he shoots the motorist in the head with it, and his hand moves forward with the blast. (00:05:10)
Correction: It does not *need* to defy the laws of physics, since the weight and resistance of the lock cylinder can be small relative to the inertia of the gun and man holding it. I don't know whether a human head provides more or less inertia than punching out a lock. However, the acts are certainly faked, so in that sense true physics are being defied. The same effect can be seen on a pool table - a hard hit cue ball can merely stop dead when hitting another ball of the same weight straight on. Full transfer of inertia with zero recoil. If the target ball were much lighter, the cue ball wouldn't even stop completely.
Corrected entry: Early in the movie Moss asks his wife "When would you stop looking for your $2 million?" implying that he knows there are 2 million dollars in the case. That implies he must have counted the money. But if he counted the money surely he would have found the transponder. How could he miss all those $1 bills (that the transponder was encased in) when they should have been $100 bills?
Corrected entry: If Anton Chigurgh is such an "ultimate bad ass," then why would he allow himself to be placed in handcuffs at the beginning of the film? I only saw one officer on scene with Anton. If there were several officers, then it would make better sense. But one officer in the middle of nowhere with the "ultimate bad ass," Anton, doesn't make sense.
Correction: Characters are free to make their own choices and unless he contradicted something it is a character choice. As for why he went peacefully, this was a much simpler plan than going on some high speed chase. At the end of the day there was little if anything to charge him with. If he had sped off it might have meant other officers joining to help pursue him and put him in danger of getting locked up for evading the authorities.
Corrected entry: Though the film is set in 1980, a number of the period vehicles are of a much later vintage.
Correction: This is too vague. Please specify when and where in the film these vehicles can be seen.
Corrected entry: When he first gets to Del Rio, Brolin's character buys a pair of Larry Mahan boots to replace the ones he lost at the river. He later hitch-hikes to Eagle Pass, gets wounded, and crosses to a hospital in Piedras Negras. He comes back into the Del Rio store for 'everything else', but he should still be in Eagle Pass, not Del Rio.
Correction: Eagle Pass and Del Rio are only separated by 50 miles. Knowing that people are looking for him, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Moss would get a ride back to Del Rio to shop for clothes and other supplies, and return to Eagle Pass only to retrieve the satchel. The border agent tells his subordinate to "get someone to help this man, he needs to get into town", it is perfectly reasonable that Moss would ask his ride to take him to Del Rio, it's less than an hour drive.
Corrected entry: Chigurh uses a captive bolt gun, which is supposed to explain why he feels no recoil. However. This only works if the gun is not pressed against something. If it's pressed against a target - like a lock in one case in the movie - he should feel an equal and opposite force to what is being experienced by his target: the mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear. The nature of the target is irrelevant: if it absorbs energy, as these examples do, there will be an equal and opposite reaction, which is recoil. The recoil of many of his uses should be significant enough to be very obviously visible.
Correction: The nature of the target is almost the only thing that matters. The physics of equal and opposite means his side of the encounter will feel only the inertia of the bolt movement and of the lock cylinder punching out, which are small if the lightweight cylinder punches out easily. Given that the gun body and adjacent pressurized hose are relatively heavy and he's steadying it, if the locks give way easily, there is not much felt recoil. Also, if the gun vents during firing, that too may play a role, which could increase or decrease felt recoil, depending on direction of venting.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bardem's character is preparing to kill Harrelson's character, Harrelson makes the statement that he can get something on the order of tens of thousands of dollars out of an "ATM." Really? You can't get more than a couple hundred dollars out of an ATM.
Corrected entry: I know Moss said it was dumb, but it was more than dumb - if there ever was a plot hole, it was when Moss decided to take water back to the wounded Mexican in the truck. This action makes no sense from any perspective. One, the obvious, is that he almost got killed doing it as he was caught at the site. Two, even if he had not have been caught at the site, if this was a true humanitarian gesture, it should have been obvious it was going to take more than a drink of water for this severely wounded man to survive, i.e. he would have to be taken to a hospital. This was simply out of the question for Moss, due to the inevitable questions, eventual police involvement, and much unwanted exposure to the criminal element out to get him. Also, if by some miracle the Mexican survived, he had seen Moss, and probably would have few qualms about identifying him to the people he worked with. Three, given Moss's later actions it seemed a little out of character, since he put the hotel clerk and the driver of a truck in harm's way without a second thought, and they both ended up dead. Moss's obvious course of action should instead have been to get himself and his wife out of the country ASAP, if he wanted to keep the money. Hanging around that area meant certain death.
Correction: Point by point: One, he didn't know he was going to be attacked, so this is irrelevant. Two, he wasn't expecting to save the man's life, only to ease his suffering. The man was begging for water, and Moss' conscience got the better of him. Three, Moss was trying to survive. Once he understood the nature of his pursuer, desperate measures were required to keep himself alive. And Moss did try to get himself and his wife out of the area; that's what the entire movie is about.
Corrected entry: When Chigurh shoots the wall in the motel room in Del Rio we see an example of the pellet pattern produced by his shotgun at a distance of about 10 feet. Later Chigurh shoots Stephen Root from a distance greater than 10 feet, so the pellet pattern should have been even larger. This implies that the window behind Root should have been broken by the pellets that did not hit him.
Correction: Although it is not mentioned in the movie, the book explains that Chigurh was using small (10) shot so that the window would not be broken.
Correction: In the hotel scene, Chigurh is not using the suppressed shotgun. He is using what appears to be an MP5 with a suppressor. If you look at the windshield of the truck, there are single bullet holes instead of a pattern. Then when Moss shoots at Chigurh in the street, and Chigurh flees, Moss picks up the MP5 that Chigurh dropped.
Corrected entry: When Llewelyn is being chased by the Mexicans in the truck he is carrying his large pistol in a "Mexican carry" - meaning he just has it tucked in the waistband of his pants - at the small of his back. We can see the gun when he takes off his coat to dive into the river. Anyone who has ever tried to carry a heavy pistol in this manner knows it is very insecure. It is not believable to think that Llewelyn could tuck that large pistol in his waistband, run a few hundred yards, dive in a river and swim 50 yards without the gun falling out.
Corrected entry: The motel rooms in both Del Rio and El Paso have large central air vents, convenient for hiding money. However the exterior shots of both motels show that the rooms are equipped with AC units mounted under the window (as evidenced by the large exterior vent under the window). It is very unlikely that both motels would use both a central air system and separate AC room units.
Corrected entry: At the start of the movie, Sheriff Tom Bell talks about how when he became a sheriff his father was still a sheriff, and both were sheriffs at the same time. However, at the end Bell is describing a dream with his father in it, and states that his father was 20 years younger than he is now when the father died, so his father is the younger man in the dream. If the father died 20 years younger than Bell is now, he could not have still been alive and a sheriff when Bell became a sheriff. (00:00:55 - 01:55:05)
Correction: Bell's precise age is not given in the film, but, based on the age of Tommy Lee Jones at the time the film was made, it's reasonable to state that Bell is in his early-to-mid sixties. He states that he's lived twenty years longer than his father, putting his father in his early-to-mid forties when he died. If the two were sheriffs at the same time, and we assume that Bell was twenty-five when he became sheriff (which is not what he specifically says, only that he was a sheriff when he was that age), that would mean an age difference between father and son of around eighteen years. This is relatively early to become a father, but hardly implausibly so.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Moss is waiting to ambush Chigurh after crashing the truck, he shoots Chigurh in the leg and picks up his specially modified pump action shotgun with the silver silencer. Yet when Chigurh approaches Carson Wells in the hotel lobby, he has that gun back.
Correction: Watch the film again: Moss doesn't take the shotgun from Chigurh, but a small SMG. Chigurh might have used the shotgun at the Motel, but he definitely takes out this small SMG to look for Moss at the scene of the accident. Check out timecodes 1:01:17 and 1:02:02 on the DVD to verify this.
Corrected entry: Colonel offers Chigur money from an ATM. Pretty sure that wasn't an option in 1980.
Correction: Why not? ATMs have been around in Texas since 1968, so it was definitely an option to use one in 1980.
Corrected entry: The first motel where Josh Brolin hides out advertises "Free HBO" on its sign (I believe it was best shown in the scene where Brolin is in the cab and chooses to drive by). While HBO may have existed as a company in 1980, it was not widely used or known at the time (let alone available and affordable to a cheap motel in rural Texas).
Correction: HBO began in 1972 and was widespread by 1975. Through the late 1970s, everybody I knew was watching HBO, and I recall many a motel advertising it on their signs near my home town, long before the events of this film.
Correction: HBO was first made available to motels in 1978.
Corrected entry: The wealthy businessman sets Woody Harrelson up with a bank account for his expenses accessible via ATM. ATMs did not come to big cities until the mid-80s, let alone the remote areas Woody's pursuit of Javier Bardem would undoubtedly be taking him.
Correction: Not true. There were over 2000 ATMs around the USA in 1974- six years before the events of this film. Big cities would be the first places to find them, and wherever Woody's character might have to drive or fly to track Javier, he'd likely pass near one sooner or later. If nothing else, it's one more option available to him.
Corrected entry: After lewelen is in the hospital, he crosses the border and goes to buy some clothes. How does he pay for the clothes? He is wearing his hospital gown (not the pants he put some of the stolen money in the pockets of). He does not have the bag with him either, so he could not have had any money with him. It is highly unlikely that he got his pants from the hospital before he left, because he would have just gotten the clothes, too. Even if he wanted to buy some clothes that were not bloody, he would have worn the bloody clothes to the store. It is also unlikely that he pre-paid for another set of clothes when he went to the store the first time, as he had no way of knowing he would need another set of clothes.
Correction: The clothes he was wearing when he was brought to the hospital would have been cut off with scissors. This is standard procedure when a person is in critical condition. The cut up clothes would be kept as the patient's personal effects. They would be impossible to wear, but he could get the money from his pockets.
Corrected entry: In the scene in El Paso at the Desert Sands motel, a Carl's Jr. is seen down the street behind Josh Brolin. It contains the star symbol on ths sign, which the restaurant didn't start using until the 90's after acquiring Hardee's. The movie is set in 1980.
Correction: The Happy Star symbol has been the logo for Carl's Jr. since the 1956.
Corrected entry: In the scene at the motel where Chigurh enters the motel room that Josh Brolin was originally renting, the door shows as room 130 but earlier in the office we see that the room was actually room 138.
Correction: Two different rooms. Chigurh determines that the money is in Room 138. But he rents Room 130, presumably to get a sense of the layout - as it's identical to 138. The Mexicans are actually waiting for Moss in Room 138.
Correction: This is not a mistake, but a realistic representation of the real-life way rigged money stacks are prepared. The outside bills will be real, large denomination bills while the inside bills are real bills with the center carved out, making them useless. Since ruining an entire stack of $100 bills would be expensive, the carved out bills are of the lowest denomination possible. Rigged stacks are not meant to pass scrutiny, as the movie shows. They are designed to go unnoticed when grouped together with other money stacks.
BaconIsMyBFF