Bespectacled Coen brothers are myopic in their vision of this story.

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2008)

After reading the wiki on the movie I understand that it is faithful to the book, which I have not read. But based on it's own merit I believe the movie fails. I am a great fan of the Coen brothers, and since Blood Simple I have seen every one of their films and loved each one. Therefore I was sorely disappointed and felt a bit ripped off by this movie, esp. the ending.
It has it's redeeming parts, to be sure, including fascinating and humorous character development. However, several parts of the storyline gave me pause, and were inconsistent with the morality of itself. For example when Chigurh is having his sit-down talk with the widow, and she refuses to call heads or tails, he says "I arrived here the same way the quarter did." Which contradicts his earlier statement to her saying it was because of a 'deal' gone bad with her husband. I realize Chigurh is portrayed as insane, but he is also intelligent which doesn't jive with this conversation.
I'm sad to see the Coen brothers fell victim to a fairly common fault with inexperienced directors in that they failed to consider how the movie would be understood and experienced by the viewer. In that respect they had a myopic vision of the story. As I say I have not read the book, perhaps the author dealt with the story in a similar way, I don't know.
The flow of the movie is interrupted in the ending when the sheriff is suddenly retired out of the blue with no lead up or lead in. This left me feeling frustrated and ripped-off.
I like a movie that makes me think and analyze things, but this interpretation went to far and left too much out.