God I didn't like this movie and I agree it has something to do with how the critical acclaim hikes up your expectations. I also agree that the performances themselves were excellent, even if I didn't like the movie as a whole.
I guess I don't like movies with "plots" that are merely observational. If you ask me, I wouldn't even say there was a full plot here because that was too abrupt an ending to really be an ending. My initial reaction, from another thread:
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Meh. The ending was so anti-climactic the entire theater was like WTF and some people started booing and laughing.
I will say that Javier Bardem plays a psychopathic killer way too convincingly. If I ever see him I'm taking off running in the other direction. I don't care if you're DeNiro, Pacino, Nicholson--nobody can act that well.
Tommy Lee Jones did well with the material that was there (excellent job of looking haggard and sagely life-worn as a Bumfuck Nowhere, Texas sheriff), and so did Woody Harrelson, even if he hardly got any screen time.
It was a good movie, I just found the subject matter particularly depressing and disheartening. Too realistic a reminder of how there are psycho's out there and the ugly nature of money, drug deals gone wrong, etc. There was very little you could take away from it, or maybe very little I wanted to take away from it that I didn't already know: avoid psychopathic killers with blank stares and don't expect to get away with $2 million from the bloody scene of a heroin deal gone wrong.
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eta: I think I would have liked an ending where Chigurh dies in that intersection near the end. That would have been in keeping with the "senseless, bad, fucked up shit happens" theme and it gives me a tiny sense of satisfaction that it happened to the bad guy too. Anything but the ending it had, god that sucked so bad, it made me want to smack both Coen brothers and demand an explanation for that shit.