Click here to copy URL

The Man Who Wasn't There

2001

Joel Coen

Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Tony Shalhoub, James Gandolfini ...

7.3

31,239

Drama. Film noir In the summer of 1949, Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), the local barber in a small northern California town, is dissatisfied with his life. In the hopes of turning his life around, he decides to use his wife's (Frances McDormand) infidelity in a blackmailing scheme. As his plan unravels, however, dark secrets are uncovered, leading to murder.

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"The look, feel and ingenuity of this film are so lovingly modulated you wonder if anyone else could have done it better than the Coens. Probably not. (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"A gripping, unusual and challenging work from the most consistently brilliant filmmakers of the last decade (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"'Man' is steadily engrossing and devilishly funny, and, o brother, does it look sharp (...) 'Man' hauntingly evokes such Forties film-noir classics as 'Double Indemnity'"	POS
United States	New York Post	"Despite its visual brilliance, its all-round cleverness, and the way it demonstrates a profound understanding of genre, the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There doesn't quite come off"	NEU
United Kingdom	Time Out	"A brave and largely successful attempt to explore the inner workings of someone who simply doesn't feel the way most of us do"	POS
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"The Coen brothers tread into James M. Cain territory with 'The Man Who Wasn’t There,' but with less tasty results than either Cain or the Coens themselves at their best."	NEU
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"A haunting, beautifully made movie that refers to nothing outside itself and that disperses like a vapor as soon as it's over"	POS

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.