Watched it last night, finally.

It deserved the awards it got. I had to think about it for about 2 hours after I finished it, and decided that "Yeah, that is a great movie". To me it seems like the story (hence the title) was about the Sheriff character, and he actually had no bearing whatsoever on the fates of any of the other characters.

I think there are a number of allegories that could be dreamt up out of the movie, which is probably the point of it. The most obvious to me was government's relative inability to keep up with the changing times vis-a-vis the evolution of visciousness, and organization of criminals. And based on some of the dialogue, the American people's desensitization to that kind of violence.