With The Man Who Wasn't There the Coen brothers--those ironic geniuses of left-field bizarre--have pulled off another side-swerve into the unexpected. A movie "about a hairdresser who wants to become a dry-cleaner" as the brothers gleefully claim to have pitched it, it's set in 1949 in the small Northern California town of Santa Rosa (venue for Hitchcock's 1943 classic Shadow of a Doubt) and filmed in lustrous, deep-shadowy black-and-white--an affectionate, though never slavish, tribute to the great era of film noir.

Not only in its austere monochrome but in its tone, it comes as a total contrast to the Coens' previous film, the cheerfully picaresque O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Though they toss in plenty of surreal gags, including a whole running thread about flying saucers (this is Roswell-era America, after all), the overall mood is quiet, reflective and even--something quite new for the Coens--compassionate. Their protagonist, barber Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton, proving himself one of the great chameleon actors of our time), is a man trapped by his own impassivity--inside him, a seething mass of emotion that he's utterly unable to express. In true Coen style, his frustration leads him into a fatal move that spirals disastrously out of control.

Thornton is ably supported by a whole gallery of Coen regulars--Frances McDormand, Jon Polito, Tony Shalhoub--plus James Gandolfini (The Sopranos) and an amazingly assured turn from Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World). The dialogue, as you'd expect, is masterly, while the brothers' regular collaborators Director of Photography Roger Deakins and production designer Dennis Gassner work wonders of period evocation, and Carter Burwell contributes a haunting score.

On the DVD: The Man Who Wasn't There comes to DVD in a sharp, clean 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer that captures all the depth and subtlety of Deakins' superb photography, impeccably matched by the crystal-clear Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound. A lavish helping of extras includes a trailer and two TV spots, stills photo gallery, filmographies, a 16-minute "making of" featurette, an overlong (47 minutes) interview with Deakins, a batch of deleted scenes, and best of all, the voice-over commentary. This gives us not just Joel and Ethan, but Billy Bob as well, chatting and chortling and clearly enjoying every second of the movie they've made. Their enthusiasm is irresistible. ???-Philip Kemp

'The closer you look, the less you see', remarks 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 hurt', 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 inwardly seething main character played to absolute perfection by Billy Bob Thornton.

The Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan, both of whom write, produce and direct this movie) have made some great films (Raising Arizona, Blood Simple, Fargo, Millers Crossing) and one or two not so good (the Hudsucker Proxy and their pointless retreading of the Ealing classic the Ladykillers spring to mind). However, it's a rare thing to find a Coen film that falls somewhere between these two points, but this is exactly where we find ourselves with the Man Who Wasn't There.
Billy Bob Thornton plays Ed Crane, a barber living a quiet life in small town California in the late 40's. Living up to the title of the film, Ed is a virtual non-entity, barely speaking to anyone around him and finding people constantly forgetting his name due to his lack of anything approaching a personality. However, Ed does not seem to mind this, happy it seems to go along with his quiet life. His wife Doris (Francis McDormand) is much more materialistic than Ed, and indulges herself thanks to her job at the local department store Nirdlingers. There, she and her boss "Big" Dave Brewster (James Gandolfini) flirt and arrange their little dalliances at a local hotel, confident that no one is any the wiser. However, Ed is aware of his wife's infidelity, and so when an opportunity to make some money and get "free and clear" as he constantly refers to it, Ed decides to blackmail Dave, anonymously of course, setting himself up as the innocent party. Needless to say, as this is a Coen brothers film, things do not go to plan, and pretty soon Ed's big plan is unravelling before his very eyes.
The film is best described as something of a tongue in cheek tribute to the classics of film noir, what with its heavy voice over by Ed, telling his tale, its fabulous use of light and shadow (particularly in one memorable scene in which hot shot lawyer Freddy Reidenschneider (Tony Shaloub) explains that by looking at something to closely one can often fail to see the bigger picture, whilst all the time his face is bathed in just enough light to obscure his features) and of course its stark black and white cinematography, except this isn't stark black and white, rather it is shades of grey (apparently the film was shot in colour and then altered to give it that film noir look), a useful metaphor for the feel of this film. Thornton gives a virtually unknowable performance as a man who simply doesn't fill the space he occupies, and no matter what happens to him fails to manifest any kind of true emotions. Coupled with a series of strange asides that occupy much of the film (including a very out of leftfield moment involving UFO's, which manifests itself again at the end of the movie, and may be a clue as to what's really going on with Ed, but could also be a spot of wish fulfilment) the film remains unengaging. It is not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not amongst the best of the Coen's film's, which leaves the viewer strangely ambivalent.

I got this on the basis of the title and that's it. I've not been too impressed in general by the Coen Brothers and can't understand what the fuss is about The Big Lebrowski. Anyhoo this film has a great atmosphere built up with lovely visuals and an enigmatic anti-hero. Its all well acted and the story is very entertaining.

I just wanted to add a note of caution - I'm a fan of both the Coen Brother's work and Film Noir but felt let down by this production.
I hate to agree with Jonathan Ross about the weak story development, but the plot is constructed to suit the film rather than vice versa and as a whole it enables a stunning tribute to a past era of film making, with superb acting direction and cinematography, but I was left feeling somehow empty, having watched a contrived pastiche or hamage rather than a film which is substantial for it's own merit.
Watching this film was as unsatisfying as eating a banquet with the taste turned down low...it looks good, does the job but leaves me feeling that I've missed by the experience.

After the success of their southern odyssey O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen brothers once again proved themselves to be the most unpredictable filmmakers in Hollywood by serving up The Man Who Wasn't There, a dream-like, detached, languid neo-noir right out of leftfield, standing in stark contrast to the misadventures of Ulysses Everett McGill and co. Not least because the film is shot in black and white, but because it maintains an almost Zen-like air of quiet (although definitely not tranquillity) throughout, due in large part to Billy-Bob Thornton's stoic and enigmatic performance as Ed Crane, the nucleus of this mood movie.
Crane is a disenfranchised barber (he doesn't much care for the title) with a disenfranchised wife living in Santa Rosa, 1949. He cuts hair; she works in a department store. Their relationship is barely existent, they seem to just be one of those couples. Things start happening when Ed gets drawn into a business opportunity -as a silent partner no less- involving a dry-cleaning enterprise. He needs $10,000 to get in on it. Acting on suspicions of infidelity on his wife's part, he turns to blackmail, leading to murder, and wrongful imprisonment. If all this sounds like quite a ride, dash those thoughts now. Most of this is tied up by the hour mark, leaving the rest of the film to ruminate on isolation, wasted life and UFO's. Although quite a departure, even for the preposterously eclectic Coens, the film remains unmistakeably theirs. They imbue it with such a vivid visual style, thanks in part to Roger Deakins' austere cinematography, that the film does take on, fairly early, the feel of a dazed half-dream with Thornton's bone-dry voiceover your guide. some may see this film as style trumping substance, especially as it drifts away and disintegrates toward the end, but let yourself get swept up in Ed Crane's unusual story and you'll see that here it is no bad thing at all, but in fact an incredibly affecting experience.