Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Year Released: 2001
Rating: 3.0
Typical Coen concoction: seemingly erratic pieces of information (crime noir, pulp fiction, science fiction, philosophical treatise) come together in some fashion later on - it's eccentricity with a point. Billy Bob Thornton (brilliant) is a barber who gets involved in blackmail and murder not out of malice but simply as something to do, triggering a chain of events that (no doubt) backfire on him. Nihilistic, or perhaps more accurately, existential - while I usually think the Coens are tinkering around with the audience in an elitist fashion (like their last 'questionable' picture, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), this is an undoubtedly more complex, intellectual work. Detractors moan about this or that - some I've read say it falls to pieces in the third act where the steady rhythm is disrupted by the teenage pianist subplot and supernatural hokum - but I'm convinced it merely needs to age to be fully appreciated (keep an eye out for critical revisions at the end of the decade). Actually, I may be underrating it myself....
