I've posted a response to Nilay's review of No Country For Old Men on the Reel Nerds movie blog. Basically, this is my impression of the film:
The cat-and-mouse game that Bardem and Brolin play is great -- it shows that the Coens have not forgotten the art of suspense after making several screwball comedies over the past decade. But Tommy Lee Jones' character is irrelevant and his long-winded monologues are a drag on the movie, physically, as they are poorly delivered and obscure, and conceptually, as they try to place extra meaning on things that don't really need extra meaning to be interesting.
But despite TLJ, see the movie. The first hour and a half is exactly why we see movies on the big screen and in the dark. But walk out -- really -- at the point where you see a woman lounging by a motel pool. Get up, and leave the theater, and imagine any ending -- A Hollywood ending where the good guy wins; a dark ending where the villain kills everyone; a Pyhrric victory where the hero loses something precious; an ambiguous ending where you don't even know what happened; or even an ending where space aliens come out of the sky and zap all the characters. Really, anything you imagine WILL BE BETTER THAN THE REAL ENDING!