A ravishingly beautiful, widescreen B&W noir pastiche that starts with the classic noir narrative wherein some hapless schmoe gets away with one misdeed but pays for another. The Coen brothers then embellish it with their trademark, supremely self-conscious tone, a cast of eccentrics and even a little UFO nuttiness. But in the end there's no there there. The year is 1949. Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), our hero and voice-over narrator, is a small-town barber, a terse loner married to flirtatious chippie Doris (Frances McDormand) and working in his chatty brother-in-law Frank's (Michael Badalucco) Santa Rosa clip shop. Doris is a bookkeeper at Nirdlinger's, the high-e...
Released:
2001
Rated:
R
Length:
116 mins