Jumbled mess

Rating: 3/10 (26 December 2012)

This movie feels like some's first draft of a story - a half-completed jumbled mess. For example, take the character of Bell. What does he do? How does his presence - or the attention spent on him by the audience - ever serve to progress the narrative? One could remove all scenes with Bell from the film, and the story would be unchanged and still make perfect sense. He is useless to the story. If you can remove a main character like this from the story and not create any plot holes, there is something very wrong with the story-telling. Perhaps Bell's character serves some purpose in the book, and was kept in the film version despite his inclusion being without purpose.
Furthermore, why does the movie not show the deaths of some of the major characters (one can guess Carla was killed because Chigurh is checking his boots as he departs the house at the end - but that is far from confirmation)? And Chigurh's fate as he limps away from the final car wreck? What is point of intentionally leaving the audience in the dark? To me, this is not fancy struggles with fate and chance - it is just poor story-telling.
I did otherwise like the cat & mouse aspect of the plot of the start and middle of the film. However, it is as if the film ends about 30 min too early. Very Lame - its an unfinished story. Some movies I enjoy watching repeatedly - this will not be one of those.