THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE A film review by Christopher Null Copyright 2001 filmcritic.com
I was warned in advance about The Man Who Wasn't There, having been told it was "definitely a Coen brothers movie." Indeed, there's no better description for this film aside from that vague insult.
Shot in black and white as an homage to film noir, The Man Who Wasn't There (no relation to the Steve Guttenberg movie of the same name) tells the tale of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton, sporting a veritable work of art on his head as a toupee), a mild mannered, chain-smoking barber in sleepy 1940s Santa Rosa, California. As Ed's life consists of cutting the same heads of hair day in and day out, he can be forgiven for a little dissatisfaction with his life.
So, when a stranger (Jon Polito) passes through looking for an investor in a nutty "dry cleaning" operation, Ed decides to blackmail his neighbor and local department store magnate Big Dave (James Gandolfini) for the seed capital -- because he also happens to think Dave is having an affair with Ed's wife Doris (Frances McDormand). This of course is only the beginning, as a body count starts to rise and nothing turns out to be as it seems.
Or actually, as everything turns out exactly as it seems. If it weren't for the usual populace of Coen brothers "wacky characters," The Man Who Wasn't There would be little more than Z-grade noir unfit for the bargain pulp rack at the drugstore. As it stands, it's merely Z-grade noir full of weird non-sequiturs like some utter nonsense about alien abductions and a bit with a would-be piano prodigy (Ghost World's Scarlett Johansson, utterly wasted here).
Shot with that typical Coen brothers flair in stark and shadowy black and white, the evocation of noir is impressive -- but in the end this is completely and utterly ruined beyond any hope by the fact that the boom is visible in almost every scene. Readers will think I'm exaggerating, but I'm serious. At least 30 times a honking black microphone -- and often the pole to which it is attached -- can be seen bobbing over the heads of the actors, even moving around in the scene to pick up the voices of different players. It's distracting to the point where you wonder if it's something the Coens put in the movie as a nutty gag. If that's the case, knock another star off my rating.
But the noir hopes for The Man Who Wasn't There are limited even with its pathetic technical work. Thornton's narration comes nonstop, initially a charming throwback to the real days of noir but inevitably overdoing it to the point where you never want to hear his voice again. The entire second act revolves around Doris's wrongful arrest and trial for murder, but the legal case is so absurd it's wholly impossible to believe. That's too bad, because the appearance of Tony Shalhoub as Doris's lawyer is one of the few highlights in the movie.
While it's pretty to look at and occasionally clever, the movie rambles incessantly and just ends up as unsatisfying on a number of different levels. I hate to say it, because I'm a fan of much of the Coen oeuvre, but The Man Who Wasn't There is barely there itself.
RATING: **1/2
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Joel Coen Producer: Tim Bevan, Ethan Coen, Eric Fellner Writer: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, Adam Alexi-Malle, James Gandolfini, Katherine Borowitz, Jon Polito, Scarlett Johansson
http://www.themanwhowasntthere.com/
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