Raven wrote:
I'm sorry that I don't share your collective feelings on NCFOM. It just really left me feeling cold. I am in no way a fan of that style of recent story-telling. I found the story itself to be very shallow and unimaginative. I have a real problem when your protagonist never comes face to face with the antagonist.
On a side note, if I ever found that much money in a bag that was related to a horrific murder scene as the movie depicts, I would put the money in a new bag and find the most discrete way for me to disappear into the Alaskan wild for about 10 years. How dumb could that guy have been? Where is Samuel L. Jackson when you need him?

well, the main point of the story is that Sheriff Bell comes to the realization that he can't face up to someone as evil/ruthless as Chirgurh, so if they had confronted each other it wouldn't have made any sense. if you look at the story just as "good guy steals money, gets chased by super-evil guy" then i guess it's unimaginative, but the movie is more/also about the Sheriff who is observing the chase
as for Llewyn, i think he was planning to gtfo and the main dumb thing he did was going back to the scene to bring the guy water (showing compassion etc). they cut out a bunch of stuff about his character compared to the book (kind of ironic since most people assume he's the main character), but i still think it has this general idea: at first he's a good/compassionate person who's not willing to kill (he has a chance to shoot Chigurh but instead just gets him to drop his gun), but then his character changes (in the movie, when Chigurh threatens his wife) and he tries to attempt to confront Chigurh, but fails because he lacks Chigurh's complete ruthlessness
also just from a technical standpoint it's got amazing cinematography/sound/performances (Tommy Lee Jones is by far better than anything else i've seen him in, his monologue at the end gives me chills)