they hyped him up a bit, and they brought in a top star in Woody Harrelson for this role. I thought he'd be a match for Anton. But he went down easily . Right in the hotel lobby, Anton walks up behind him. And he kills him like any bystander. I figured Carson was some kind of badass
shareHe was too confident and cocky.
shareIt is such an interesting situation with Carson and Chigurh...how Carson's final scenes play out. Wasn't Carson an ex-Marine? Definitely an "alpha male"...but, yes, Chigurh kills him pretty much without a fight.
I kind of think Carson thought he still could reason with Chigurh and talk his way out of the situation. At the end, though, I think he knows he's a goner (After he tells Chigurh, "You don't have to do this."). I think Chigurh was definitely going to kill him if he made a move.
Carson's death reminds me of baseball and a hitter facing a pitcher with two strikes. The hitter is looking for the fastball and doesn't see the curveball coming, to the point where he freezes and doesn't even swing the bat (strikes out looking). I'd rather go down swinging than looking and Carson went down "looking," so to speak.
I love this movie. I haven't seen it in a long time...a lot of things left open to interpretation.
It appears that Carson was being hired not only to retrieve the money but to take out Chigurh. Perhaps he should have focused on finding Chigurh first and the money second.
Regardless, Chigurh was just as skilled at that kind of work as Carson it appears, so it was just a matter of who nabbed the other first. If the roles were reversed Chigurh couldn't have saved himself from Carson either.
I do wonder (without having read the book) how Chigurh knew Carson was in town in order to sneak up on him to begin with.
One could imagine that Chigurh was monitoring who was going and coming from the hospital and happened to notice Carson at one point.
It’s another case of the film deliberately ‘disappointing’ the audience, as it did with the off-screen death of our protagonist Moss.
Tommy Lee Jones’ character Ed Tom Bell wants to believe in a world of morality and justice, as we do, but the film just keeps punishing us for seeking meaning and having hope. Chigurh just rides in again and kills everyone, including Carla.
But there is a greater force than Chigurh to which even he is subject - chaos. Chaos is wiping out a Country that once cohered around a shared vision with a Christian basis, turning it into a godless desert.