Amazon.com: For all of its late-1940s cold war paranoia, pulp fiction dialogue, and frenzied greed, Joel and Ethan Coen's The Man Who Wasn't There is their most cool and collected film since Blood Simple. An unassuming barber with a scheming wife (Frances McDormand) and a serious smoking habit, Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is an onlooker to his own life, a ghostly presence set against a silver-toned film noir backdrop. Only when he decides to alter his fate by blackmailing his wife's lover (James Gandolfini) in order to invest with a traveling salesman (Jon Polito) touting the wave of the future--dry cleaning--do we begin to hear the full extent of Ed's understated, existential lament. As his lawyer (Tony Shalhoub) says in Ed's defense at his eventual trial for murder, "He is modern man." Thornton's deadpan eloquence and cinematographer Roger Deakins's precision lighting offer the perfect counterbalance to the requisite one-liners, plot twists, and false endings that have come to characterize recent Coen brothers films. Almost in spite of the obsessive cultural references (flying saucers, Nabokov's Lolita, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), Ed Crane steps neatly from the fray as one of cinema's most memorably disenchanted characters. --Fionn Meade
The Coen Brothers' finest work. The Man Who Wasn't There takes patience, a slow, dry movie that deftly and almost subtly takes the Coens' two styles (broad comedy and twisty, cause-and-effect crime drama) and blends them into a single piece of filmmaking. Where else are you going to get a pitch-perfect film noir, goofy alien subplots, such darkly ironic twists amongst discussion of dry cleaning and hairstyles?
Billy Bob Thornton inhabits the character of Ed Crane in a way that weighs down on his shoulders, dampens his mood, blanks his face. His "friend", Big Dave (James Gandolfini) tries to engage and amuse Ed, but Ed has already realized his wife may be having an affair with Dave. Ed smokes, stares out into the great unknown, and decides to blackmail Dave.
The results of this action are varying and intricate. If you put them side by side, they might look strange and baffling, but in the course of the movie, they make sense. In a movie full of highlights, it's hard to pick just one, but if I had to, I'd name Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub), a lawyer who talks a lot, mainly to himself. The cinematography is also beautiful -- glorious, evocative black and white that perfectly embodies the film's main character.
The Man Who Wasn't There is an acquired taste. Only after seeing all of The Coen Brothers' movies can I say it is my favorite, because it almost stands outside itself as a comment on their style. It's alive, yet unrealistic, dark yet funny, truthful, yet inescapably cinematic. It's the reason I love the Coen Brothers, and the reason I watch movies.
Coen Brothers: Film # 9 This is a special Coen Brother's film. It is special because it is more for people who are fans of the Coen Brother's or film noir. While I believe others will surely like this film if they simply put it in their players, I also believe that they will not even give it a try because it is in Black and White. Well, I say, try it. Not surprising, we have a great film here. It is great because it is in black and white as a matter a fact. Like older films, the B&W brings forth a whole new perspective into this film. Where color would distract, a film in Black and white will show you exactly what needs to be seen. The Coen Brothers and Roger Deakins do a superb job with the black and white film here.
Billy Bob Thorton does a wonderful job with his character here. In fact, in my mind, he is the film. I have never seen a character like Thorton's character in other films. In this film he is a quiet man. But unlike other films, where we develop an understanding of this quiet man through moral dilemmas, explanations from other characters, in this film Thorton's character remains quiet. We are not later given a monotonous dialog of who this guy really was, he just was and that is all.
In the end, this is film noir at its finest and, mind you, it was made in 2001!
It drags like a wet cigar, chomped half to death in the corner of my mouth Coen Brother's hit and miss film-making style did it again with this miss. I am a HUGE fan of their work, and an enormous fan of noir. But this was just too dragged out. The cast was great, the characters were great, the film was beautiful, but it was just boring. The narrative was ridiculously cliche, even for the neo-noir genre. It really broke my heart. I had hoped for sooooooooo much more. Go read some Fante, Faust, or rent some good ol' Mike Hammer DVDs.
Lovingly crafted work of directorial genius 'The closer you look, the less you see', says the brilliantly Jewish lawyer in this film. Some have said the same about the typical Coen film script, but when it comes as multi-layered and intricate as this, as well as being shot in sublime film noir photography, who cares if the philosophy might not be as deep as it first appears? And every performance here is a delight, from the aforementioned sophisitic genius of a laywer who yet has to admit that this murder plot 'makes his head spin', to the effortless beauty and charm of a teenage heartbreaker Scarlett Johansson. in fact, its hard to pick out any one above the others in this lovingly crafted work of genius, save perhaps for the magnificantly languid yet seething main character played to absolute perfection by Billy Bob Thornton.
Smart Art Film Smart movie. Very artistically done; the black and white cinematography is amazing. Superbly acted. And, in the true sense of the Film Noire genre, keeps you guessing at every turn. I found the ending quite unexpected, and though a bit on the down side, successfully portrays the more chilling aspects of human existence, leaving the viewer with some food for thought, and the age-old dictum about crime not paying. Well done. To Cook is Divine, Italian, Filipino, and Southern-style Vegetarian Recipes from Outside the Box
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