Primeiro, o filme é baseado no romance romance de mesmo nome de Cormac McCarthy .
Numerosas vezes no decorrer do filme você pode ver o xerife Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) expressando seus pensamentos sobre a corrupção moral na sociedade hoje em dia e freqüentemente o compara com o tempo de seus predecessores (" oldtimers "). Uma citação de exemplo retirada do IMDB:
Mesmo que o xerife Ed Tom Bell não apareça na tela com muita frequência (comparado a Chigur e Moss), ele é o narrador e o protagonista do filme. Assim, o título refere-se ao declínio moral que deu origem aos indivíduos maus (Chigur) e depravados (Moss) e tornou a sociedade moderna inadequada para os "veteranos".I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Comanche County. I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would have operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I sure don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."
Alguns links:
- Página da Wikipedia sobre temas e análise do filme tem um bom conjunto de referências
- O romance em si recebeu o título de um poema Velejando para Bizâncio (
That is no country for old men...
)