It's always an interesting exercise to try to tell the story from a different protagonist. One thing this kind of exercise makes me think of is which writer/director would the movie more resemble if the switch was made. I feel like if Kubrick were to have made this movie, he would have made a protagonist out of Chigurh in the way he made one out of Alex in A Clockwork Orange.

Garrett, that is a really interesting thought re Kubrick / Chigurh. And underscores one of the more intriguing aspects of NCFOM. Conventional wisdom about mainstream commercial movies has so long been about a single Protagonist narrative, it almost feels codified. Now I'm not suggestion NCFOM is mainstream, but it did prove to be, at least by Coen brothers standards before their big success with True Grit, a successful movie. And the story pivots between three narrative points of view. Is it a story about a guy who finds a briefcase full of cash? Is it a story about a demented criminal who escapes? Is it a story about the lawman who tries to figure out what's going on? Somehow it's all three. My instinct, as I watched the movie, was to think of Moss as the P, but then he gets whacked with 18 pages left in the script. So then I go to Bell and the story ends with him. I'll be interested to watch the movie again tonight to see about this question. But once again it proves stories are organic, and they can work despite whatever 'rules' supposedly exist.

I suppose the inciting incident is Moss taking the money, which leads me to think of him as the protagonist. But actually Moss, Chigurh and Bell are all kind of after the money (Bell so he can close the case rather than for personal gain, but still), so in a way it's a team chase movie. Everyone wants to "win" by getting that money. Compounding the confusion, Bell starts the movie (with narration) and ends it, but he's the least proactive character - by nature of his job, he tags along in Chigurh and Moss' wake, picking up the pieces rather than driving the action. But in the end, the story works because it's a collision between three very different moral drives - honour (Chigurh), the law (Bell) and greed & selfishness (Moss), all of which are fascinating to watch. And because none of them are prepared to give an inch, which promises drama and tension.

I have read some other articles/essays online where their author believes there to be a three-protagonist structure and I believe there's merit looking it as such. As I've noted before, I think much of it really comes down to how one chooses to define protagonist. What helps the story regardless is that they all have goals and obstacles, no matter who we see the story through - so inevitably the important thing to really consider is that a protagonist is nothing without an antagonist and what we have here is a web of characters who play various roles to each others functions. In that sense, protagonist and antagonist really serve as simple definitions for complex relationships. Thematically, the characters embody some pretty straightforward functions: Sheriff Bell is the wise old-timer who inexplicably gets caught up in a violent tale he can't fathom. He comes from, and idolizes, an ideal time where law officers didn't carry weapons. Even to his present predicament, when he's about to enter Moss's trailer, he tells the deputy to draw his gun. When asked if he's going to, too, Bell replies nope, I'm behind you. Moss is veteran who's been through war - and not a pretty one at that. Almost all of his instincts point to traits of survivalism - because that's probably what war does to one: reduces their desires to the primal level of survival. As such, he shows the instincts for it and is, in some ways, the opposite of Sheriff Bell in the sense that he's not confounded by what's going on. Somewhere in between the two is Chigurh, a man who lives by some bygone era of decree or code - but in such a way that he straddles the line between the past and the future, resulting in violence. I like to think of him as a force of nature - he's time and its progression, something that is unstoppable... something that, sooner or later, catches up to all of us. These are three distinct characters, but what truly defines them is their actions when their paths intersect. A character is just a character after all; it's their relationships with each other that define them and give them perspective.