Critically acclaimed for breaking conventions, which isn't always good.

Rating: 2/10 (27 December 2010)

I really was looking forward to seeing this movie due to the critical consensus and even a couple of positive reviews from coworkers.
The movie certainly starts out extraordinarily well with some deft cinematography and storytelling. With barely any dialogue, you can still tell exactly what is happening as Llewelyn Moss discovers a major drug deal gone awry, and how he cautiously explores the devastation and pockets the money. You can tell that the main character is somewhat grizzled, knows his way around weapons, would likely kill a man, but yet isn't a callous killer as he simply disarms a man and offers some rough consolation rather than just filling him full of holes.
Shortly after this part, the movie went downhill for me. Personally, it's like watching the Terminator and having someone snarkily say, "These final showdowns are so cliché, wouldn't it be much cooler if Reese and Sarah Conner accidentally got hit by a bus offscreen, and the Terminator didn't even know about so even he ends up failing in a way?" And therein lies the (deliberate)irony for the movie. You have a Terminator style movie with a plucky hero trying to escape from an unstoppable villain, and none of it matters. In fact, it's supposed to be established that the main character of the movie is not in fact the plucky hero, but rather just some old geezer that has no real interaction with any of the main characters and doesn't affect the plot line in any way(for the Terminator metaphor, this is like trying to say the Psychiatrist was the main character).
In most coherent story lines, characters and developments are supposed to exist for a reason but in this one they are mostly superfluous. Tommy Lee Jones appears to have an important role in the movie, but he doesn't. Woody Harrelson shows up in the movie as a supposed learned veteran, but doesn't affect the plot other than to give some minor info about the villain.
Many fans of the movie also find the villain extremely scary and/or creepy, but I found him completely cartoonish. It would be about as subtle as having Darth Vader stroll around Texas, and apart from one scene of him reading a phone bill to track down Moss, doesn't seem particularly skilled as a tracker. For those who like to say the film is more realistic because the good guy doesn't always get away and the bad guy doesn't always get caught, you lose that argument with this character, as the screenplay bends over backwards to accommodate this freak. He seems to have the superpower to make everyone around him drop 20 points in IQ or not raise any fuss about the dozens of people he brutally kills. A character this distinct in appearance and manner and so strongly lacking in people skills shouldn't be that hard to track down.
Finally, to drive the storyline at all the main character has to do some ridiculously stupid things to leave a trail. Once again using the Terminator comparison it's like having Sarah Conner leaving a message on her answering machine or calling her mother so the Terminator has an idea of where to find them. However, those are at least somewhat understandable actions whereas those of Moss are just downright ridiculous: 1. After successfully stealing the money without anyone noticing him, he returns to the scene of the crime to bring a dying man some water. Beyond the fact that this is ridiculously risky, it's also rather pointless, as the guy is probably dead. If anything, why not make an anonymous call to the police to send an ambulance? Even the character admits that this is completely stupid, but shrugs his shoulders as if to say, "well, we can't just have the story end here, can we?".
(A lot of the fans like to say that he's obviously stupid for stealing the money knowing that someone would likely come after him, but I'm curious as to how since he's completely off the radar at that point).
2. He never searches the money to find the transponder until it's too late. This is just baffling, as several days have passed and he's already spent a great deal of effort trying to conceal the money by this point. In addition to moving the money to a less conspicuous bag, it's rather odd that he wouldn't, you know, try to count the money to see how much is there or to see if there's anything else like drugs or guns in the bag? For those who like the movie because it has an unconventional story structure- it actually has a relatively conventional structure for the first 75% or so and then subverts it all in the end. For those who think it's more realistic to not have a Hollywood ending, the movie defies realism by letting Chigurh get away with as much as he does, and with the main protagonist committing stupid errors so he can get caught.
In fact, the only thing novel about this storyline is that it mostly follows conventions for the first 75% and then turns it all around in plot twists just to give the viewer the middle finger at the end.