Good action movie with a terrible ending

Rating: 4/10 (5 January 2008)

I will skip the plot synopsis, since I figure you already know what this movie is about if you are reading my review. I want to speak directly about the ending. So if you haven't seen the movie, don't read on because there will be spoilers. *****SPOILER ALERT******
I was really enjoying this movie right up until the ending. The movie centered on the conflict between two great characters: a seriously ruthless, relentless bad guy and a very likable "everyman", who was a clever underdog played by Josh Brolin. It was really great watching Brolin's underdog clashing with the terrifying hit-man, and the whole time you are rooting for Brolin to win because you like him so much and you hate the villain so bad.
Then, a little more than half way through the movie, the two characters become set to face off against each other. I was thinking, "Wow, this is going to be awesome. We are going to see one hell of a showdown." The two characters who have been chasing each other through the whole movie finally have a voice to voice phone conversation and they promise to kill each other.
But what you expect to happen is actually the opposite of what happens in the movie. The good guy does not win and ride off into the sunset with the girl. Instead, the bad guy wins and kills EVERYBODY! And he gets away with it! At the very end, Tommy Lee Jones gives some kind of rambling monologue about a dream he had regarding his father. I am sure it was meant to have some kind of a summary importance to the movie, but it seemed pretty vague to me. If anything, I got the feeling that the movie was trying to send a message, and I believe that "movie messages" should be implied, not imposed.
Bottom line, I don't like bad guys winning! I hate having a good guy character that I identify with get killed by a bad guy that I hate. That is a flaw that I cannot forgive in this movie.
I rated this movie a 4. I would have rated it lower but I really liked the action and the characters in the first part. They had a lot of tense moments and a lot of good gun fights. That was definitely worth seeing. But the ending absolutely ruined it for me. I know other IMDb users are going to say that the Coen brothers were trying to be unconventional, artistic, and they were trying to stay true to the book of the same name, etc. But I don't care about that. I care about GOOD MOVIES! And I am disappointed that this movie took such dumb turn at the end.
It could have been and SHOULD have been much better.