Man Who Wasn't There, The

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Like all the Coens' movies, "Man" is supremely self-aware and darkly, hellishly funny. It's also brilliantly written and acted to a fare-thee-well by an outrageously good cast.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Most of the way this ranks with the Coens' most immaculately crafted work. Cain would have loved its dreamlike chills, and so will audiences nostalgic for the movies of half a century ago.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

The Coens' plotting, with its suspense and reversals, is a source of amazement and delight.

New Times (L.A.) Bill Gallo

For all its long shadows and ominous atmosphere, this is a very funny movie -- as funny as the Coens' masterful "Fargo."

Time Richard Schickel

If this were not such great American-vernacular moviemaking -- hilarious yet hypnotic -- one would be tempted to see something Greek in the tragedy that Ed never comprehends.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's an entirely conceived work of art, dark and hopeless and maybe even callous, but glittering and wonderful in its determination and in its craft.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

You could say a lot about the very satisfying The Man Who Wasn't There, but what's for sure is that no one but the deadpan, dead-on Coen brothers could have turned it out.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

When you're in the hands of the Coen brothers, you're in for sheer originality.

LA Weekly Steven Mikulan

The Coens have resurrected a hardscrabble California of wooden porches and gravel driveways, of rolling, oak-wreathed hills and one-lane roads, and of a restless people whose meager dreams are wrecked the moment money, sex or a bottle get in the way. Never has the past seemed so familiar.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The Coens have used the noir idiom to fashion a haunting, beautifully made movie that refers to nothing outside itself and that disperses like a vapor as soon as it's over.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Steadily engrossing and devilishly funny, and, o brother, does it look sharp.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

To be sure, there are goofy flourishes here, the in-jokey, left-field rummies that are the Brothers Coen's stock-in-trade. But this is altogether a quieter, more philosophical sort of endeavor.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Isn't content to stick to the genre conventions it sets up. Instead, it sprawls and mutates into one of the Coens' elaborate gizmoid yarns.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's the latest and one of the best entries in a genre whose highest philosophical expression is the whiplash realization that the universe doesn't play fair.

Slate David Edelstein

The film is marvelous fun on its own terms -- I laughed all the way through it.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

This fastidiously hyperreal neo-noir suggests a sadder but wiser remake of the Coens' rambunctious debut, "Blood Simple."

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's the best-looking film of the year, hands down, and Thornton is dazzling, a dull diamond in the gutter rough.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

So assured and perceptive in its style, so loving, so intensely right, that if you can receive on that frequency, the film is like a voluptuous feast.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Has all the tense crackle of film noir and the molasses drip of irony that is the trademark of movie-making brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Once you get the joke and grasp the aesthetic they're after, it's fun, and it almost works on the steam of its clever plot mechanics.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Not for them the straightforward spoof, but, instead, a slightly creepy desire to have it both ways -- to inject new life into noir, but also to laugh behind their hands at its antique solemnity, and to urge us to follow suit. [5 Nov 2001, p. 105]

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

What makes me respect The Man Who Wasn't There despite myself is the sense that the Coens want it to be about something that can't be described or defined.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

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.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Lacks the requisite sense of dread.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

As a whole, it's a bit of a mess, the work of bratty geniuses with talent to spare, but unsure of what -- if anything -- they're trying to say.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The juice in "Man" comes from supporting characters.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Thornton seems born to play the sort of slow-witted poet of the mundane that the Coens find worthy of their condescending affection.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's clever, in a "dare you to name this hommage" kind of way, but it's fundamentally heartless and coldly hollow.

Film Threat Saul Austerlitz

tThe resulting hodgepodge is a medley of the brothers’ favorite verbal and visual tics, making much noise and signifying nothing.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The Coens have a true feeling for the sleek surfaces of the genre, but they don't connect with its sordid, sexy undercurrent; that's why Crane is made to seem so passive.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Isn't serious enough to fulfill its ambitions, or funny enough to compensate for its failures.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Ordinary moviegoers, on the other hand, may wonder what they're supposed to feel, apart from bored.