No Country for Old Men Page #2

Road rushes under the lens. Point-of-view through a windshield

of taillights ahead, the only pair in sight.

A siren bloop.

The car pulls over. A four-door Ford sedan.

The police car pulls over behind.

The prisoner -- his name is Anton Chigurh -- gets out of the

police car and slings the tank over his shoulder. He walks

up the road to the man cranking down his window, groping for

his wallet.

MAN:

What's this about?

CHIGURH:

Step out of the car please, sir.

The motorist squints at the man with the strange apparatus.

MAN:

Huh? What is...

CHIGURH:

I need you to step out of the car,

sir.

The man opens his door and emerges.

MAN:

Am I...

Chigurh reaches up to the man's forehead with the end of the

tube connected to the air tank.

CHIGURH:

Would you hold still please, sir.

A hard pneumatic sound. The man flops back against the car.

Blood trickles from a hole in the middle of his forehead.

Chigurh waits for the body to slide down the car and crumple,

clearing the front door. He opens it and hoists the air tank

over into the front seat.

EXT. ARID PLAIN - DAY

Seen through an extreme telephoto lens. Heat shimmer rises

from the desert floor.

A pan of the horizon discovers a distant herd of antelope.

The animals are grazing.

Reverse on a man in blue jeans and cowboy boots sitting on

his heels, elbows on knees, peering through a pair of

binoculars. A heavy-barreled rifle is slung across his back.

This is Moss.

He lowers the binoculars, slowly unslings the rifle and looks

through its sight.

The view through the sight swims for a moment to refind the

herd. One animal is staring directly at us, its motion

arrested as if it's heard or seen something.

Close on Moss's eyes, one at the sight, the other closed.

He mutters:

MOSS:

Hold still.

He opens the free eye and rolls his head off the sight to

give himself stereo.

Close on the hatch-marked range dial on the sight. Moss

delicately thumbs it.

He eases the one eye back onto the sight.

Point-of-view through the sight: Moss adjusts to bring the

cross-hairs back down to the staring animal.

Moss's finger tightens on the trigger.

Shot:
gunbuck swishes the point-of-view upward.

Moss fights it back down.

The point-of-view through the sight finds the beast again,

still staring at us.

The sound of the gunshot rings out across the barial.

Short beat.

The bullet hits the antelope: not a kill. The animal recoils

and runs, packing one leg.

The other animals are off with it.

MOSS:

Sh*t.

He stands and jacks out the spent casing which jangles against

the rocks. He stoops for it and puts it in his shirt pocket.

EXT. ARID PLAIN - LATER

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