Bardem's performance as Chigurh was widely lauded by film critics—he won an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and a British Academy Film Award for the role. Other accolades include Chigurh's presence on numerous Greatest Villain lists, most notably in Empire's list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, in which he was ranked #44,[1] as well as being named the most realistic film depiction of a psychopath by an independent group of psychologists in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.[2][3]
Character overview
Chigurh is a killer devoid of conscience, remorse, and compassion. Whenever he is given a task, he will stop at no length to complete it, going as far as to murder anyone who gets in his way.[4] He is described by Carson Wells, a central character in the novel, as a "psychopathic killer" in his 30s with a dark complexion. Other characters describe Chigurh's facial features as "exotic looking". His signature weapon is a captive bolt pistol, which he uses to kill his victims and also as a tool to shoot out door locks. He also wields a sound-suppressedRemington 11-87 semiautomatic shotgun and pistol (as well as a TEC-9 in the film adaptation). Throughout the novel and the film, Chigurh flips a coin to decide the fate of some of his victims.
Creation
The character is a recurrence of the "Unstoppable Evil" archetype frequently found in Cormac McCarthy's work. However, the Coen brothers wanted to avoid one-dimensionality, particularly a comparison to The Terminator. To avoid a sense of identification, the Coens sought to cast someone "who could have come from Mars". The brothers introduced the character at the beginning of the film in a manner similar to the opening of the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Film critic David DuBos described Chigurh as a "modern equivalent of Death from Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal."[5]
When Joel and Ethan Coen approached Javier Bardem about playing Chigurh, he replied, "I don't drive, I speak bad English and I hate violence." The Coens responded, "That's why we called you." Bardem said he took the role because he dreamed of being in a Coen Brothers film.[6]
The Coen brothers got the idea for Chigurh's hairstyle from a book Tommy Lee Jones had. It featured a 1979 photo of a man sitting in the bar of a brothel with a very similar hairstyle and clothes similar to those worn by Chigurh in the film. Oscar-winning hairstylist Paul LeBlanc designed the hairdo. The Coens instructed LeBlanc to create a "strange and unsettling" hairstyle. LeBlanc based the style on the mop tops of the English warriors in the Crusades as well as the Mod haircuts of the 1960s. Bardem told LeBlanc each morning when he finished that the style helped him to get into character. Bardem supposedly joked that he was "not going to get laid for two months" because of his haircut.[7]
His background and nationality are left undisclosed and largely open to speculation. When writer Cormac McCarthy visited the set of the film adaptation of his novel, the actors inquired about Chigurh's background and the symbolic significance of his name. McCarthy replied, "I just thought it was a cool name."[6]
Role in the plot
In 1980, Chigurh is hired to retrieve a satchel holding $2.4 million. After killing those who hire him he discovers that the money is in the possession of a local welder named Llewelyn Moss, who chanced upon the money while hunting.
Chigurh tracks Moss down to a motel using a receiver that connects to a transponder hidden in the satchel. Moss has hidden the money in a ventilation duct. In both the film and the novel, Chigurh steals a key from the presumably murdered hotel clerk (this murder is not made explicit either in the film or the novel). He then seeks Moss, listening at various doors before punching the lock out of one of Moss' rooms. Rather than finding Moss, he encounters and kills three heavily armed Mexicans.
Chigurh discovers that another bounty hunter, former colleague Carson Wells, has been hired to retrieve the money and eliminate him. Chigurh kills Wells. The latter had tried to broker a deal with Moss to give him protection in exchange for the money. Chigurh intercepts a phone call from Moss in Wells' hotel room and offers to spare Moss' wife should he agree to give up the money. Moss refuses and vows to track down and kill Chigurh. Mexican hitmen later kill Moss at a motel in El Paso. Unknown to the Mexicans, Moss had hidden the money in the vents again, which is retrieved by Chigurh.
Moss' widow finds Chigurh waiting for her after her mother's funeral. He listens to her pleas for mercy before asking her to bet her life on a coin toss. In the book, she calls heads; it comes up tails. In the film adaptation, she refuses to call the toss, saying the same words she says in the novel after losing the coin toss, "the coin didn't have no say. It was just you." The movie then cuts to a shot of Chigurh leaving the house and checking the soles of his boots for blood, implying that he has killed her; in the novel McCarthy writes "Then he shot her." While driving away from her house, Chigurh is badly injured in a car accident, sustaining a compound fracture of his left ulna and walking away with a limp. At the scene of the accident, before the authorities arrive, a teenager on a bicycle sees a wounded Chigurh and offers him his shirt. Chigurh uses it to bind up his wounds and as a sling for his now broken arm. Chigurh gives the teen a blood-soaked $100 bill as a bribe to not tell anyone he was there, then flees the scene before the ambulance arrives.
Reception
Critics have praised Bardem's portrayal of Chigurh, for which he received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA.
UGO.com ranked him in its list of top 11 "silver screen psychos", saying, "Chigurh is an assassin of little words and interesting choices of weaponry—is a man without a sense of humor. Others might say he's got a warped sense of principles. One thing that most can agree on, is Chigurh is one crazy S.O.B.—ruthlessly killing damn near anyone who sets eyes on him, let alone those who get in his way. And apparently, the only way you can survive a run-in with the man is the 50–50 chance of a coin toss, but Dear God, don't question his motives, it just seems to irritate him even more so."[8]
Empire.com ranked him #46 in their list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, praising the look on his face when he strangles a cop with his own handcuffs and that "when American novelist Cormac McCarthy wants to throw a dark character at you, it's a safe assumption that you're not going to be able to get them out of your head for a good, long while—if ever. One of his best is Chigurh, and between the Coens and Bardem, they never missed a beat in bringing this monster to the screen. With the kind of unholy relentlessness usually reserved for horror icons, the hired killer has an almost supernatural ability to track his prey, and is rather short in the mercy department, preferring to leave the tough decisions to a coin toss. And that bowl cut is utterly terrifying."[9]
