Noir has always been about people caught in circumstances where there seems to be no way out and one bad decision may spawn a series of events that eventually catch up with the people involved.
In this story, Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton, channeling Humphrey Bogart through his looks and Fred MacMurray through his voice-overs) is the victim of his own life. Caught in a dysfunctional marriage of apparent convenience to Doris (Frances McDormand), working a dead-end job as a barber with her brother, going through life like a shadow (people have a tendency to forget his name), he also suspects Doris may be having an affair with her boss Big Dave (played by James Gandolfini). When a deal comes by which could make him some big money, he thinks he will carry this through and get some revenge towards his wife. Things go wrong -- the man with whom he has jumped into a shady business has disappeared -- and Crane accidentally (or out of rage) commits a murder which lands Doris in jail.
To say more of the story would be to reveal twists and turns of the plot as it advances towards its full-circle and those must be experienced instead of told in a "review." But suffice to say, every action generates a consequence, and even plot threads which had been apparently been dropped eventually re-surface with tremendous, almost painful irony and remind us that noir is an unforgiving genre, unkind to its characters, cruel to the extreme. If at times the story seems a tad long it's in the subplot involving Scarlett Johansson who coats the movie with a Lolita-esquire persona as her character essays a tentative affair with Crane; however, even that storyline feeds into Crane's retribution at the end.
Gorgeous black and white, textured use of deep-focus, this is a movie Gregg Toland would have loved to have his hands on had this been 1941 instead of 2001. THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE could be called stylistic in its frank depiction of textbook noir (James Cain comes to mind), but the Coen brothers make it work all the way through with smart direction, scenes that smolder, and a touch of their own unique humor interspersed here and there. Not their best but very, very close.
In this story, Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton, channeling Humphrey Bogart through his looks and Fred MacMurray through his voice-overs) is the victim of his own life. Caught in a dysfunctional marriage of apparent convenience to Doris (Frances McDormand), working a dead-end job as a barber with her brother, going through life like a shadow (people have a tendency to forget his name), he also suspects Doris may be having an affair with her boss Big Dave (played by James Gandolfini). When a deal comes by which could make him some big money, he thinks he will carry this through and get some revenge towards his wife. Things go wrong -- the man with whom he has jumped into a shady business has disappeared -- and Crane accidentally (or out of rage) commits a murder which lands Doris in jail.
To say more of the story would be to reveal twists and turns of the plot as it advances towards its full-circle and those must be experienced instead of told in a "review." But suffice to say, every action generates a consequence, and even plot threads which had been apparently been dropped eventually re-surface with tremendous, almost painful irony and remind us that noir is an unforgiving genre, unkind to its characters, cruel to the extreme. If at times the story seems a tad long it's in the subplot involving Scarlett Johansson who coats the movie with a Lolita-esquire persona as her character essays a tentative affair with Crane; however, even that storyline feeds into Crane's retribution at the end.
Gorgeous black and white, textured use of deep-focus, this is a movie Gregg Toland would have loved to have his hands on had this been 1941 instead of 2001. THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE could be called stylistic in its frank depiction of textbook noir (James Cain comes to mind), but the Coen brothers make it work all the way through with smart direction, scenes that smolder, and a touch of their own unique humor interspersed here and there. Not their best but very, very close.