Forget 'Memento,' Billy Bob Thornton's Noir Thriller Is the Perfect Replacement

The noir genre is present within the cinematic DNA of nearly every film by Joeland Ethan Coen, including their brilliant debut feature Blood Simple, the somber hardboiled mystery of Fargo, and even the The Big Lebowski‘s wacky sleuthing. Although it was evident that the Coens had deep admiration for the noir films of the 1940s, their 2001 film The Man Who Wasn’t There was a full-on throwback period piece, shot in black-and-white, that was heavily inspired by the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock, most notably Shadow of a Doubtand Rope. It’s a film that contains the idiosyncrasies that are expected of the Coens, but also features one of their most transfixing and compelling protagonists ever in Ed Crane, a mild-mannered barber portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton draws out the ambiguity within a character who is both completely vulnerable and entirely unreadable, and it’s the different interpretations that can be spun out of The Man Who Wasn’t There that makes it one of the most underrated entries in the Coens’ entire body-of-work.