Rating: 
Summary: A truly creative collaboraton
Review: Though not a passionate Coen brothers' films fan, I think THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE is more than just another one of their quirky films. This beautifully photographed film unfolds a story so unique that it justifies all the directorial techniques it receives. Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, and James Gandolfini are visually and technically marvelous. The method of telling this dark tale of revengeful moves in black and white accompanied by piano sonatas of Beethoven is a delight. The twists and turns of the plot, the monotone narration by Thornton, the sounds of life leaving (as in Gandolfini's death scene), the unexpected response by the powers that be at every turn - all of these parts add up to a sum of genuinely fine story telling. Highly recommended DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Great Coen Brothers dvd!!
Review: Another quirky entry in the Coen's filmography.
This is a great film and it looks fantastic on dvd. Roger Deakin's cinematography is gorgeous(of course!)! Disc includes the first ever Coen Brothers commentary(with Billy Bob Thornton) which is pretty good. There's also deleted scenes and a 45 minute itnerview with Roger Deakins. A no-brainer purchase for any Coen fan!
Rating: 
Summary: Another Well-Reviewed Movie I Didn't Like.
Review: Until they made this film, in my book, the Coen Brothers were
8-0 (or, more properly, 7-0-1--'The Big Lebowski' was
sporadically entertaining, but also obnoxious). This is their first mark in the loss column. It should be pointed out that my admiration for the Coens
is quite the opposite of the critical norm. Those films of
theirs usually held in highest regard by the critics
(like 'Fargo' and 'Blood Simple') I only think of as good,
while their least respected work, often deemed "superficial"
('Miller's Crossing', 'The Hudsucker Proxy', 'Barton Fink'
and 'O' Brother Where Art Thou?') I love to the core for their
passion, innovation, and playfulness. So when the critics started to gush over this one, I should
have sensed trouble. Instead, I suffered--actually suffered!--through a truly
boring film. Suffered? From the Coen Brothers? 'The Man Who Wasn't There' is a lifeless husk of a film.
The "superficial" tag once batted around (far too easily) by
the critics finally applies. The water here is half an inch
deep. It has a lovely surface reflection, but, despite the
wealth of "theme" hinted at throughout the script (but never
developed) there's really nothing here to get your ankles wet. And slow. My lord, slow! What's surprising is that the Coens have already proven
themselves adroit at snappy banter and rattlesnake
pacing. 'The Hudsucker Proxy' and 'Miller's Crossing' both
play fast and tight with words and plot. That makes it all the
more puzzling that this film, which owes its existence to taut
films like 'Double Indemnity' and to the writing of the so
-called "Boys In The Back Room" like McCoy and Burnett and Cain,
completely abandons the lightening-quick approach of the hard
-boiled tradition. Instead, it's so ponderous it's stiff. Watching 'The Man Who Wasn't There', I kept trying to
convince myself that the lulling rhythm was intentional, meant
to direct my eye or my brain or my ear to something beyond the
surface, something more rewarding. Didn't. Read a James M. Cain novel instead, or watch a movie
like 'Scarlet Street'. In this instance, go to the source. PEOPLE WHO'LL LIKE THIS FILM: I am both a stone Coen
Brothers fan and a stone hard-boiled fan, and I didn't dig it;
I suppose philosophy majors might like it, and indie-boosters.
Rating: 
Summary: The Movie That Wasn't Good
Review: The Man Who Wasn't There is not a good movie, whatsoever. Frequently boring, and thoroughly unengaging, it is as whispy and non-descript as the main character, Ed Crane. It tells a story filled with twist after twist, and kudos to the Coens for originality, but what's the overall purpose, the theme, the message? A film with so little entertainment value should at least have some sort of broad philosophy. I'm sick of filmmakers, talented in their own right, treating their audiences like we're stupid and just "don't get it". Well, if you, like me, just weren't intellectual to "grasp" the Coens' "offbeat sensibilities," I'll let you in on something...there's absolutely nothing to get. The film adopts black and white cinematography to evoke a noir atmosphere, which I guess lends it some novelty. While overall, pretty to look at, what about a film like Pleasantville that utilizes B & W for a greater purpose, screws with our preconceived notions of the kind of atmopshere it sets, and overall manipulates the format to full affect of the story it tries to tell? No such effect here. In fact the whole purpose of using B&W appears to be that the Coens can underplay and downplay every possible emotion with the guise that this is "cool" and a "noir." The truth is, the Coens are telling the exact same story they've told for the past 20 years. They're parasites of any format they choose. Just look at O Brother, Where Art Thou? Utilize old bluegrass music and some colorful Southern slapstick, and whaddya get? The same numbing effect that's prevalent during nearly all of their films. The Man Who Wasn't There is no exception of their continual trend of taking on something that at first glance appears inventive, but, turns out to be exactly like the last one. But onward. Billy Bob Thornton plays Ed Crane, a quiet barber during the 1950's. Crane is in a loveless marriage, perhaps the most artificially loveless marriage of the century. And we send our sympathies to Crane. His wife is cheating on him. Played by Coens regular, Frances McDormand, the adulteress is having an affair with Big Dave (James Gandolfini). "It's a free country" Crane says indifferently of the affair. At this point, I was enjoying The Man Who Wasn't There, from Billy Bob's smooth narration, to the fact that it's well, just a great exposition- entertaining, hip, everything that Coen admirers have praised the entire film of being. But the Coens better nature had to kick in and there just had to be a sick "extreme" moment, (there's at least one in all of their films). This time a toupeed businessman tries to have sex with Crane, and it's the weirdest, coldest moment I've ever seen, colliding with every element of the movie up till that point, and creating a deadening effect from which the film never fully recovers. Plotwise, the greater purpose of the toupeed businessman was to sell a new business opportunity, dry cleaning, in which Crane would have to invest 10,000 dollars. At this offer, Crane gets ideas. He decides to blackmail Big Dave annonymously for the money he needs to invest. But then Big Dave finds out it was him. And there is a squabble and Big Dave ends up dead. Crane's wife is wrongfully accused of Big Dave's murder, and in order to hire an attorney, Crane sells his barbershop. A court case ensues and she hangs herself, guilt-ridden by a crime she never committed. See how awful this is? But wait, it gets worse. Ed Crane has his eye on a young piano player played by Scarlett Johanson whose music career he thinks he could manage. He takes her to a music teacher and whoops!, turns out that not only is she bad at piano, she never wanted a music career in the first place! Ed Crane is a failure on all levels; he's impossible to sympathize with and the Coens show little to no compassion for him. He makes one stupid decision after another. Billy Bob Thornton gives a good performance, I guess. I disliked this movie too much to tell. I mean, how can you act in an awful movie and save yourself? My respect for him as an actor is still intact, but Billy Bob should know better than to dirty himself in pretentious [junk] like this. The Coens need to take more time to think about their next project, and what constitutes as a compelling film. Humor, romance, action...The Man Who Wasn't There is devoid of all of these elements. What was it intended to be? A supposed character study of a caricature. The Man Who Wasn't There isn't even riotously bad. It's as forgettable as its hero, which ultimately renders it worse than anything.
Rating: 
Summary: Undeniably compelling
Review: After the crowd-pleasing knockabout comedy of the 30s-set "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" - a cheery, New Deal proposition which played out like "I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang" under the direction of the Keystone Kops - the new Coen brothers movie adopts the grimly fatalistic tone of a 50s noir thriller, its brooding shadows cast by both the Second World War and the resulting paranoias. If "O Brother" was the "before" photo of an America singing its way out of a Depression, then "The Man Who Wasn't There" is the snapshot labelled "after". It's cold and dark, and is certain to put off as many visitors to the Coens' world as "O Brother" attracted. Thornton, his nicotine-stained voiceover containing enough tar to merit a Government health warning, is Ed Crane, a small-town barber forever sweeping up after those around him. The most passive of active smokers, Crane barely moves for himself until the one false move he makes to kill off his wife's lover and set off a chain of events leading to his own demise; it doesn't come as too much of a surprise when this hero goes out not in a hail of bullets, but sitting down to die. One of the great joys of a Coen movie is that they cast, right down to the minor roles, people who can act to the extent that it's a pleasure to spend every moment of a longish film in the same room as them. (Even in the non-speaking roles, the brothers cast fascinating faces.) "The Man Who Wasn't There" offers - aside from the more-than-capable Thornton, McDormand and Gandolfini in the lead roles - a supporting cast including Tony Shalhoub as a preening peacock of a lawyer, Jon Polito as the gay dry-cleaning entrepreneur who sets the story in (so far as one could call it) motion, and Michael Badalucco as Crane's verbose brother-in-law, getting the movie's most obvious, "O Brother"-style laughs in riding around on the back of pigs and winning pie-eating contests for the benefit of his young cousins. Otherwise, the humour is muted and deadpan, existing in throwaway asides: this is a small town whose hotel, we learn, names its suites after operas. The film's funniest lines are those ascribed to other characters passing (unintentional) comment on the motionless hero: "Is he awake?," asks a physician at Crane's bedside, just after a road accident sparked by a young girl's assertion that the emotionless Ed is actually "an enthusiast". The major talking point may be the look of the film. Whatever the ins and outs of the technical process whereby the brothers arrived at this quality of film stock, Director of Photography Roger Deakins here has access to aesthetically purer blacks and whites than any seen on the screen in the last forty years, and he makes notable use of the tonal palette this facilitates: you get a depth of field which allows an amazing grasp of the distance between a veil and a woman's face, or of the detail apparent when Ed submerges his wife's razor in her bath water, shaking hundreds of microscopic hairs to the bottom of the tub. This sense of depth also applies to some of the themes apparent in the writing. Characterised by his lawyer as "the modern man", Crane is often framed in one-man-against-the-mass shots, walking against the flow of the crowd. This, I think, ties into the late 40s/paranoid 50s idea of "a modern man" as someone destined only to stand still - or, perhaps more expressively, doomed to do his own thing - while everyone else, their collective stock raised by the prosperity of the post-War boom years, gets rich quick around him. This was a period in which, if the McCarthyites didn't get you, the Commies would; if the Commies didn't get you, the A-bomb would; and if the A-bomb didn't get you, the Roswell aliens certainly would, so Ed's fundamental fatalism is perhaps entirely understandable. More importantly, "the modern man", in the Coens' eyes, is a sensitive type - Crane bemoans the fate of chopped hair - with no obvious outlet for what he's taken from life's hard knocks until it's just too late; his tentative and trembling relationship with a young pianist (Johansson) is exactly the sort of relationship the doomed hero of a 50s thriller would take up in the hope, for him as for us, of a last-reel redemption which invariably won't follow. This idea of a hero unable - or unwilling - to do anything about his plight, and the Coens' trademark emotional reticence about such plights, means the film won't be for all tastes, but there's something undeniably compelling about the manner in which the filmmakers have humanised the old "what if a tree falls in a forest" riddle and wrestle with the resulting melancholy conundrum that haunts "The Man Who Wasn't There": what happens when a man who talks to nobody has nobody left to talk to?
Rating: 
Summary: The man who wasn't worth seeing
Review: The Coen Brothers are the darlings of the Internet generation. They are extremely prolific filmmakers, giving friends and critics a new and unique film to discuss every year. With THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE they add another flick to that collection. This one is a noir tale of trust and murder (not necessarily in that order...) Billy Bob Thornton (SLING BLADE) is a nice addition to the Coen brothers' pool of actors and I hope to see him return in a different role. For this film he portrays a mostly silent barber who goes through the motions of life even as his wife has an affair. Eventually the conflict ends in murder. Along the way we experience several quirky characters that add to the occasional fun. And just to make sure it is a Coen Brothers film leaving us slightly off-guard, we get a scene with a UFO. But, this film in no way captures the American experience the way their film FARGO did. Sure, we are still in a small town with lots of quirky characters, but we can't hate or root for our hero. He appears too passive and content with his own life, so it's a stretch to care if he grows or succeeds. Once again, the Coen brothers have given us a gorgeous looking film, this one in stunning gray and white, with little content to carry it through...
Rating:
Summary: One of the Coen brothers' best
Review: Billy Bob Thornton gives a beautifully understated performance as a low-key barber who's sudden urge for revenge ends up, in baby-steps, ruining his life. This Coen brothers gem also features wonderful supporting work from Frances McDormand, as Thornton's unfaithful wife, and Tony Shalhoub, as a fast-talking lawyer. *** 1/2 stars out of ****
Rating:
Summary: The Coen brothers are such a treat!
Review: Billy Bob Thornton gives a beautifully understated performance in this Coen brothers gem about a low-key barber, who's sudden urge for revenge ends up, in baby-steps, ruining his life. Wonderful supporting work from Frances McDormand, as his unfaithful wife, and Tony Shalhoub, as a fast-talking lawyer.
Rating:
Summary: good film ruined in the end
Review: This movie develops as an amazing & understated character study of a man swept into murder and scheming not so much by his greed but by his history of letting life merely happen to him. The performances are brilliant--Tony Shalhoub is great as the big-shot lawyer. In the final 20 minutes however, all the movie's subtlety, humor & pain are swept away in a deluge of misapplied pop culture references and awkward speechifying. The Coen Bros run out of faith in their own movie, have no idea how to satisfy all the story's needs, and just tap out with a series of ridiculous jokes. If they'd
showed more respect for their own ability, it would easily have finished as the classic that Fargo is; instead it's an addled and ultimately forgettable sideshow.
Rating:
Summary: The Coens -- Out of Gas?
Review: One can only surmise that the Coens were contractually obligated to produce a film and had no choice, 'cause they sure had no script and no imagination. A dreadful, tedious little film, in the worst sense of "little". I liked the set decoration, makeup, and costumes; the houses, rooms, barber shop, etc., seemed exactly right for 1949. I liked little else about the film. The cinematography is especially a real disappointment, the supporting characters have little to do, and it's one of the few Coen films that is a complete waste of time. Only for their fanatic fans.
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