A great many thrillers are undone by a pervasive buffoonery, characters are routinely intellectually slighted in service to the needs of an advancing narrative. There's an idea that it's inadvisable to make your characters islands of forthright capability as it might upset some of the dimmer bulbs out there. Better to follow formula. Usually these calculative oversights are compensated for with explosive spectacle. The audience is harassed into forgetfulness, their attention led away from the lapse in believability by something exciting.
Not so No Country for Old Men. You could argue that having Josh Brolin's Llewelyn Moss return to a scene of slaughter with water for an afflicted is a cheat, facilitating as it does the central pursuit thread, but it's an action based on a kinder, more emotionally human instinct. His pangs of reflective conscience separate him from his terrifying enemy, a spectre man named Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, who entertains catastrophic 'principles'. Moss has Chigurh's money, so Chigurh follows Moss. Both are cagey and self-sufficient. They are also accomplished trackers, able to posit solutions and counter-solutions to problems. They share a reluctance to seek any outside help or comfort, maintaining their shattering bodies with improvised medical care and destructive sleight of hand. So successful are they that they barely meet. Instead they delicately circle, picking at each other's worlds.
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