Review of The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) by Richard S — 09 Jun 2015

If I were writing a noir-inspired story about a movie that schemed to pull off the perfect audience heist but screwed it up so badly that it wound up in jail, The Man Who Wasn't There would be the central character.

While it is clear that the Cohen brothers planned the visual style of the movie very carefully - the contrast between light and shadow, the fashion of the late 40s, the ever-present cigarette smoke, even the use of black and white instead of color - it is also clear that they failed to remember the most important lesson of film noir: it must have a cracking good story with sharp dialogue.

Sadly, neither is present. The dialogue is clumsy at best (e.g., "He was gone like the nips at Nagasaki" - ugh, that is bad), and the story, while beginning with a good premise about a blackmail scheme gone awry, eventually wanders off into a plodding character study that nearly bored me to tears.

I think the worst aspect of this movie, however, was the ending (and the UFOs; we mustn't forget the UFOs...and I am not kidding). Unlike traditional film noir where the bad guy gets his cosmic comeuppance, and the audience gets a mediation on how poor choices destroy lives, in this flick the bad guy proudly informs us that he regrets nothing (after causing multiple deaths, no less!), and the audience is seemingly expected to agree.

Yeah, in many ways this is a movie that seems right at home in the solipsistic 21st Century. While neo-noir aficionados might enjoy this flick, lovers of classic film noir are best advised to stay away from this modernist take on the genre.