No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men is a thriller film that was released in 2007, directed by the Coen brothers. We watched the ten minutes in class and looked out for typical conventions of thriller films included in the film.
The film is set in United States–Mexico border in 1980. The opening scene features a voice over of Sherriff Ed Tom Bell, and lots of shots of open landscape. This creates a quite eerie feel to the film already, as it is very quite and builds a lot of tension. The shot of the open scenery gives off the theme of isolation, which is a typical feature in thriller films. There is sound of wind in the background, which again promotes the theme of openness and also gives a spooky effect to the film. Apart from the outside noises, there is no non-deigetic sound in the first few scenes. This creats tension for the audience and allows them to focus on the storyline and it also makes the outside noises more noticable.
We are later introduced to the psychopathic murderer when he gets arrested by the sheriff. The look of the character gives the audience the impression that he has no feelings at all, and he shows no remorse after murdering people. The outfit the character shown in the mis en scene is all black. The connotations of black are dark character, and usually a bad person, in this case a murderer. The man does not really say very much, which arises suspicion and mystery about his character.
The first murder scene takes place in the police station. The sheriff has just come off the phone to another sheriff, raising questions about the oxygen tank occupying the man. Whilst the sheriff is doing this, in the background we see an unfocused image of the man untangling himself from the handcuffs. He successfully does this and then moves over to the sheriff. As soon as the sheriff puts the phone down, the man is strangling the sheriff with his handcuffs. There is a lot of blood spurting out of the sheriff’s body, which is another typical feature of thriller films.
A few scenes later, we are introduced to another character, a hunter who is shooting deer. He is dressed similarly to a cowboy. He shoots one deer in the back, but it does not die instantly so the man has to trace the deer’s steps and find the it. Whilst doing this he comes across another trail of blood and follows it above a rock face. Bellow the rock he sees three trucks and dead bodies with guns on the floor. This tells us that there has obviously been a gun fight which is a typical feature of a thriller film. The man goes down to get a better look. He searches the vans, possibly for goods, or for clues of what exactly happened. He cp,es across an injured, but alive man in one of the trucks. The injured man begs for water, but the other man practically ignores him and searches the rest of his truck. He finds a large amount of what appears to be drugs in the back of the injured mans van. This hints to the audience that the gun fight could related to drug incidents. The man then just leaves the injured man to die, which shows he is quite heartless. Another thing noticeable in this scene is that the man doesn’t really seemed to be shocked at all at the scenario in front of him, suggesting that he has scene death before, and he is not effected by it.