Javier Bardem’s award-winning performance as Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is iconic in the pantheon of cinema villains. Fans may not be as familiar with the novelist Cormac McCarthy’s original creation of the villain in the eponymous book. The late McCarthy’s reputation as a premier contemporary American novelist largely resides in his unflinching portrayal of violence, which is something American audiences seem to have a perpetual appetite for. No Country for Old Men epitomizes this in its characterization of the serial killer, Anton Chigurh. In the book, Chigurh relishes in his cruelty; at times he’s akin to a James Bond villain, almost comical in his wickedness.

The Coen Brothers removed this element from Chigurh’s character and made him entirely dispassionate in the film. This makes him even more frightening than McCarthy’s antagonist. Whereas in the novel Chigurh perversely takes pleasure in sadism, in the film he treats murder as if it’s no more consequential than breathing. His behavior is mechanical, thus rendering him not merely inhumane, but inhuman. This makes the Coen Brothers’ vision of McCarthy’s harbinger of doom all the more terrifying and is why it is the movie villain, not the literary antagonist, that lives in the villain’s hall of fame.

McCarthy Characterized Anton Chigurh as a Sadistic Psychopath
Image via Paramount Pictures

For fans who may read the novel after first seeing the movie, they may think they’re reading the screenplay. The film is faithful to the book down to the word. The story begins with Chigurh’s brutality — after strangling a police officer, Chigurh uses a cattle gun to kill an innocent, unlucky driver. In the movie, Chigurh simply asks the man to step out of the car before swiftly killing him, but in the novel he taunts the dead victim, saying, “I just didn’t want you to get blood on the car.” The book presents Chigurh’s sadism from the outset, while the movie presents him as impassive. In a later chapter that features a shootout, Chigurh approaches his victim and says, “Don’t look away. I want you to look at me,” before shooting him, though no such scene occurs in the movie. The Coen Brothers certainly cannot be accused of pacifying violence to make the movie more palatable, as the violence is grizzly and terrifying in its realism. Instead, these omissions create a difference in characterization — Chigurh kills people without thought or remorse in the movie; in the book, there is something personal in his carnage. By removing the personal element in the movie, the Coen Brothers arguably made Chigurh more psychotic. He presents as someone to whom murder is entirely inconsequential.

The Coen Brothers Omitted Glimpses into Chigurh’s Psychology

There is something inherently frightening in mystery, and in the movie, Anton Chigurh is just that, as the audience never learns where he is from or what exactly he’s done before. McCarthy gave insight into Chigurh’s mind in the novel, somehow making his villainy easier to comprehend. An iconic scene in the movie occurs when Chigurh kills fellow hitman Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson). The corresponding chapter in the novel depicts a lengthier conversation between the two, during which Chigurh says, “Getting hurt changed me…changed my perspective.” This single sentence is more introspective than the entire film depicts. Chigurh proceeds to recount an anecdote about killing someone outside a bar and then philosophizes on the logic of his murders.

Related From ‘True Grit’ to ‘The Road’: 9 Movies Like ‘No Country for Old Men’ Morally complex, thought-provoking dramas to watch after you finish the Coen Brothers’ classic.

Omitting these details is not a failure on the Coen Brothers’ part but rather a tactic that preserves Chigurh’s characterization in the film as a mechanical, albeit psychotically deranged, serial killer. Similarly, near the novel’s conclusion, Chigurh returns the briefcase of money to its owner. In typical McCarthy fashion, the conversation that ensues is both hysterical and hauntingly bleak: Chigurh initiates a de facto job interview, telling the man, “The purpose of my visit is simply to establish my bonafide. As someone who is an expert in a difficult field. As someone who is completely reliable and completely honest.” Sure, if bonafide means being reliable and honest about killing people based on a coin toss. The Coen Brothers wisely left this chapter out of the movie (at the cost of losing some gallows humor) because it, again, adds complexity to Chigurh, thus somehow making him less frightening, but perhaps more shockingly evil.

The Coen Brothers’ Re-creation of Anton Chigurh is a Masterclass in “Less is More”

Cormac McCarthy’s novels are some of the greatest to have been written in the 20th and 21st centuries — an element of their quality is that they leave room for interpretation. McCarthy created a frightening, haunting psychopath in his depiction of Anton Chigurh, but the depth of his character detracts from his evil, as readers are given a diagnosis. In stark comparison, the Coen Brothers offer no explanation for the audience in their depiction of Chigurh. He is how he is, and he takes no pleasure in his evil like he does occasionally in the book. Somehow, this makes him seem less cruel but far more psychotic. There is no humanity in him, not even sadism, as he is entirely, and literally an embodiment of evil. This puts him in a league of his own in the arena of movie villains.

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande.Release Date November 21, 2007 Director Joel Coen , Ethan Coen Runtime 122 minutes Main Genre Crime

No Country For Old Men is Available to Stream on MGM+ in the U.S.

Watch on MGM+