Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

An action-packed slog

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is a barber in a small California town circa 1948. A quiet man who rarely speaks more than a few sentences on any topic, he has been married to Doris (Frances McDormand) for many years. Doris is more sociable and drags Ed to parties and dinners. She is a bookkeeper for Big Mike (James Gandolfini), a department store bigwig by marriage. Somehow, Ed gets news that Doris is cheating on him with Big Mike. Therefore, he concocts a scheme to blackmail the Big Man with a secret letter. Ed wants to invest money with an up and coming businessman and maybe escape his routine. However, Mike finds out and invites Ed to his office on another pretext. In the office, Big M tries to kill Ed who fights back with a handy letter opener. In a horrifying scene, Mike dies slowly in a gurgle of blood. Ed thinks his tracks are concealed. But, soon, DORIS is arrested for Mike's murder, when it is discovered she has embezzled money from the accounts. Will Ed let Doris take the rap for him? Into this deadly mix comes a piano playing Lolita (Scarlett Johanssen) who takes Ed's attention off the crisis in his life. In this labyrinth movie, there are more twists and turns ahead! Here is another winner from the national treasure of the Coen Brothers. Shot in black and white, it is a quietly noir movie of great power, in words and concepts. Thornton delivers a performance of praise while all of the others, including Gandolfini, do likewise. Naturally, the art direction and costumes bring the forties to life with gusto. So, don't say there isn't anything to do this evening when you can get your mitts on this flick!

So I just watched The man who wasn't there, a noir movie from the Coens brothers, which won them the 2001 Cannes for best director (tied with David Lynch's Muholland Drive). And oh boy, I love and hate this movie at the same time.The movie can break out into first half and the second half. While the first half setups the plot and introducing characters, the second half is much faster and hits me with lots of thoughts.The movie starts out with the life of Ed Crane, a barber in 1949 America. Leading a sad boring life, Ed doesn't seem to feel or react to anything in his life. He didn't married out of love, and his wife doesn't care about him, even though she may say she does. He can tell she's having an affair with her boss/his friend Big Dave. One day he met a pansy who lured him into investing in dry-cleaning business. At once glance anyone can see this is a scam or it will fail, but Ed buys it. Probably he wanted a chance to escape his boring barber life. So he blackmailed Big Dave the affair to give the pansy the money. This was later found out by Big Dave. Ed was called to this shop by Big Dave to "solve" this problem, but ended up killing him in a self-defense act. This is the first half of the movie. My main thought until this point, especially after Ed and his wife went to a party to meet people they don't like, is that adult life is like a box, you can't escape and do what you want all the time. Things speed up in the second half of the movie. As the plot moves forward, my head was filled with thoughts about life. The movie is in black and while, and uses some Beethoven's best sonatas, setting its tone into sadness, I half feel sorry but half not for Ed, or what he's going through. This movie with all these "random" things happen, reminds me of another Coens' movie "A serious man". While its philosophy is: life has no meaning, nothing we do ever matter. Not until the middle of the movie, i realised this is a tragic- comedy. I didn't laughed at all about what happen (except sometimes the joke was too obvious),I just feel sad as things keep happening throughout the movie. *This part contains spoilers for the ending* Slowly he lost everything, his wife, his money, his store, and he lived like a ghost. There was this scene right after the accident. It was about Ed and his wife having a normal life, I viewed it as Ed's best moment of his life. At the end, he got arrested for murder, not for Big Dave but for the pansy Big Dave found out and killed. I think he accepted it like a punishment to himself for killing Big Dave. He got the chair. After all the sadness, I think this is the happy ending we got. Ed, like me, didn't understand how all this happened. Sure we know it steps by steps, but we couldn't see any pattern. Maybe he truly have no place in this world. He's *The man who wasn't there*, he's good as dead.

It's always a pleasure to watch a beautifully crafted neo noir thriller. And what adds greater to the pleasure is the fact that in spite having a radical approach, the movie stays true to its plot. The same happens with Director Joel Coen's latest. The story mainly deals with a succinct barber who is disappointed with his life and gets entangled in a web of murders and misfortunes which seem to be the part of something much bigger. Billy Bob Thornton is refreshingly addictive as Ed Crane, the laconic antihero supported with a petite but powerful performance from James Gandolfini.Special mention goes to Roger Deakins who does a tremendous job with the camera. He gives a certain charismatic aura to the monochrome effect with brilliant use of light. That being said, the movie could have been a little stronger towards the end.What started out as a nail biting thriller starts veering towards the emotional.The ending is a one to cherish. Taking away the concept of a happy ending, the film delivers the message it was intended to- "Karma always strikes back. Sometimes in a really creepy way!"Watch it!

With all due respected, I've just finished watching this film and I really can't understand why people enjoy it so much. I mean, the story is intelligent and I can agree with that, but there are so many twists that I couldn't, any longer, get what was going on. I didn't understand who killed who, and the reason for that. And what about the aliens? What do they have to do with the whole story? Also, I got confused with Frank and Big Daver; in my opinion, they were portrayed by too similar actors, with caused some mess in a black and white picture. I understand that there is some great acting-- with exception of Scarlett Johansson , who looked shallow in this, which is unusual for her--, but the movie as a whole is just too boring, slow and twisted to be enjoyable. This is the second time I have problems with a Joel Coen work, and maybe that's just my personal view on his productions-- or maybe it's just quite bad anyways.