From what I recall of the movie, I don't think I shared the Atlantic's notion of anything especially resembling self-knowledge or redemption on Davis' behalf. Maybe a little bit. I don't recall any particular sense of his life or personality likely to be much different.

It seems like the latter day Coen brothers like to challenge themselves in placing a rather unpleasant, selfish yet intelligent character centre stage and experimenting in how far we can empathise with them (we can't really sympathise with them, they're not really nice enough people for that) as they interact with some people that are even less pleasant, or much nicer (but perhaps a bit dull, over-earnest or a bit stupid). And then quite often subjecting the protagonist to a run of bad luck or humiliations, or ironies of history.

There aren't many storytellers that do that - that will take a not-very-nice, bit lazy, lackadaisical, selfish and ultimately unimportant person as the central character and then just 'see what happens' yet still make it engaging.