re: Movie endings that made you feel like you just wasted 2 hours of your life

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Because I thought that was a poor ending as well. Love the movie, just not sure I get the ending.

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Up front, I should tell you that in the book, Carla Jean gets the coin toss wrong and is killed. I like the film version better.

On the other hand, you're speaking specifically about the sheriff's final talk. The book and film are set in 1980. Therefore, the Sheriff is of the WWII generation and the other principals (the Mosses, Chigurh, and Wells are boomers, although Wells might be a silent generation) - the sheriff laments the way things used to be. The 3 men are all very similar in their approach to problems, generally very methodical - yet they are all pursuing different outcomes (with the same ultimate object, the money). The juxtaposition of the 3 main characters is completely clear - Moss is a hunter. Once he takes the money, he becomes the hunted and the sheriff is hunting both "hunters".

So - we have the anticlimax of 2 of the 3 protagonists killed off-screen - a potential for the killer to meet justice (but he avoids it).

Then you have the sheriff's summation. 2 dreams - both about his father - one in which his father gives him some money and the other where his father has gone on ahead of him and is preparing a campsite.

Throughout the film, the sheriff had been lamenting the loss of values - this final monologue was about the opportunities the previous generation had offered and the hope and uncertainty of the future. "And then I woke up." Life isn't a dream. The film's lack of a nice, neat, satisfying ending reinforces that.