10 Brilliant Movie Endings That Give You The Finger
2. No Country For Old Men
No Country for Old Men might be a modern masterpiece, but it does have its detractors all the same. A lot of viewers were no doubt infuriated by the ending, and that's more-than understandable. It was designed to be infuriating.
This tale concerns Llewyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who steals some money from a drug dealer gone wrong and finds himself being pursued by sociopathic hit-man Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Meanwhile, Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to stop the bloodshed. It is all in vain.
Much like the Cormac McCarthy novel it's based on, No Country for Old Men breaks all the rules with its ending. Llewyn is killed off-screen by some random Mexican gangsters, Anton Chigurh gets away with everything and Ed Bell, the character a more conventional film might've made the hero, fails to stop anything and ultimately retires, having lost his faith in the world. In fact, he and Chigurh never even meet face-to-face,
It's a pure and devastating piece of cinematic nihilism that has no faith whatsoever in humanity, and the way this ending refuses to give viewers any sort of conventional catharsis is perhaps the key to its nightmarish, harrowing effect.