Am I thick or all you all lying? (Or both?)

I just watched a movie I'd been excited about. Some would say obsessing over.. My girlfriend bought me Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men after I drooled over someone else's in a pub while he went out for cigarettes. He had the same leather jacket as me, but that's by the by. I read it in a day, on planes, trains and in bed. I really loved it. The ending stang, but there was never any indication that it would end well. Much as you hoped Llewellyn Moss would get away with the cash, you knew, just as he did, that his life had just taken a sharp swerve into a dead-end. So I was drooling to see the movie. My schedule (by which I mean all the drinking) prevented us from seeing it at the cinema but I took the plunge and bought it a couple of days after release. I had talked up the book so my gal was pretty excited too.

Anyway, enough backstory. I didn't like it. I was a bit surprised when it came in at under 2 hours. Victoria fell asleep and only woke up at the car accident, so she didn't have too much to say about it, but I went to bed, not feeling sad for Moss and his wife, as I'd expected, but just a bit pissed off.

Yes, it looked beautiful. There weren't any cheap devices for suggesting the time-period. Josh Brolin was great as the smart-mouthed Moss. I liked the fact that there were no credits in the opening. I liked Woody Harrelson's small role as Wells; in fact all of the performances were expertly measured. I liked lots of things about it. But those things alone didn't make it a great movie. I'm surprised to say it, but Paul Thomas Anderson wuz robbed.

I'm going to come out and ask- who was that film about? It didn't cover Moss or Ed Tom enough for you to give a shit about either. I suppose it was about Chigurh. But what about Chigurh? You pretty much figure out precisely what kind of person he is in the first hour. You could even fool yourself into thinking he didn't kill Moss'wife at the end. It'd be a stretch, but Victoria managed it. I suppose the Cohens got carried away with Chigurh's character, and as a result undercut the others. Most of the dialogue was verbatim, and yet some small but significant scenes were missed out altogether. Instead of Tommy Lee Jones visiting Moss' dad on the porch, allowing us to mourn for Moss, we get that dream business and that's it. Balls, I say.

McCarthy set us up for the explosive final showdown which never came, and I'd be near the front of the queue to lambast the Brothers Coen if they'd changed the ending and actually given us all what we wanted, but this is like having your external hard-drive stolen, buying another one and then having that one stolen too. First time around it's heartbreaking, the second it's just fucking annoying. I'll say it again- balls.

So yeah; please, someone explain to me why you love this film so much. Because right now I'm of the opinion that the Academy thought 'hmm, criminally overlooked in the past, now on a downward slide following Zeta-Jones-Douglas dreck and bad remake of an Ealing Comedy with a fucking Wayans brother... better spunk all over this one before they make Dan Brown's Deception Point.'

But as for the rest of you, what's your excuse?