20 Most Important Film Deaths This Decade

13. Llewellyn Moss - No Country For Old Men (2007)

Count on the Coen Brothers to defy convention and give us one of the more unexpected, frustrating and divisive protagonist deaths in any recent movie, especially one that went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is preparing to meet his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) in order to pass off the money to her, but she instead co-operates with Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) in order to try and keep Llewellyn safe. However, Bell goes to the motel Carla Jean was supposed to meet him at, only to find his dead body, having been shot by Mexican drug dealers just moments earlier, who are then seen speeding away. So, the protagonist of the movie dies off screen? Why? This as well as the movie's enigmatic closing moments infuriated many viewers with the seeming lack of a resolution, as though the Coens were mocking their audience for expecting a conventional narrative. However, Llewellyn dying off-screen wasn't so much an effort to toy with audiences as much as it shifted the scope of the story from then on: it reminded us that, really, Bell is the protagonist of the story, an old man (as the title notes) who is struggling to maintain order. Sure, we would have liked to see Moss actually get blown away, but the Coens' choice served an artistic purpose rather than merely to screw with us.