Javier Bardem plays a serial killer for whom killing people is meaningless hence sometimes he has fun while killing by giving the victims a chance for them to decide their fate through a coin toss.
In this particular scene Anton Chigurh, the character played by Javier goes to a petrol pump and fills up gas. After filling up the gas he buys a bag of cashews and heads to the bill counter. An old man who owns the pump is there at the bill counter saying 6 dollars for the cashews. When Anton asks how much for the gas instead of telling the price the old man takes little interest in the place that Anton is coming from. The old man says he noticed that Anton is coming from Dallas. Now Anton is a serial killer and he doesn't like people to notice his business.
So Anton enquires about the old man to know what else he knows about him and finds out that the old man got this pump from his in-law. The decisions that he made throughout his life have made him meet Anton and be in this situation. Although Anton has decided to kill the old man he wants to give him a chance by flipping the coin. Before he flips the coin he keeps his empty chocolate wrapper on the table and we can hear it slowly unkink. There was no music used for this scene hence this sound creates tension between the two characters and also the old man keeps on answering Anton's questions politely and carefully as he doesn't want to trigger him.
Now after flipping the coin Anton asks him what's the most he has lost in coin coss. He keeps giving the old man a hint about what's about to go down but the old man is still unclear on what he is calling the coin for. After a few dialogue exchanges, the old man calls the head and it is head so Anton leaves without killing him. There is another scene towards the end of the movie where Anton asks a woman to call for the coin but she refuses as she knows what is at stake in the call. Here the old man doesn't know the stake and hence he calls it and to his luck he called it correctly.
This scene is one of the cinematic masterpieces on creating tension between the two characters with just dialogues and performances of the actors. And also this scene works well because it correlates with the theme of the movie that we are all responsible for the decisions that we take.
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