The wanderer, the psychopath, Anton Chigurh, is a man who's supernaturally invincible." Even the directors have weighed in. Joel Coen found the film "interesting in a genre way; but it was also interesting to us because it subverts the genre expectations." He did not consider the film a western because "when we think about westerns we think about horses and six-guns, saloons and hitching posts." But co-director Ethan said that the film "is sort of a western," before adding "and sort of not." Gillmore, though, thinks that it is "a mixing of the two great American movie genres, the western and film noir," which "reflect the two sides of the American psyche. On the one hand, there is a western in which the westerner is faced with overwhelming odds, but between his perseverance and his skill, he overcomes the odds and triumphs. ... In film noir, on the other hand, the hero is smart (more or less) and wily and there are many obstacles to overcome, the odds are against him, and, in fact, he fails to overcome them. ... This genre reflects the pessimism and fatalism of the American psyche. With No Country for Old Men, the Coens combine these two genres into one movie. It is a western with a tragic, existential, film noir ending." Themes and analysis One of the themes in the story involves the tension between destiny and self-determination. According to Richard Gillmore, the main characters are torn between a sense of inevitability, "that the world goes on its way and that it does not have much to do with human desires and concerns", and the notion that our futures are inextricably connected to our own past actions. Enda McCaffrey details a character who refuses to acknowledge his own agency, noting that Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) ignores repeated reminders that he doesn't have to behave as he does and suggesting that by relegating the lives of Carla and the gas station clerk to a coin toss, he hands "responsibility over to 'fate' in an act of bad faith that prevents him from taking responsibility for his own ethical choices." Not only behavior, but position alters. One of the themes developed in the story is the shifting identity of hunter and hunted. Scott Foundas stresses that everyone in the film plays both roles, while Judie Newman focuses on the moments of transition, when hunter Llewelyn Moss