The Man Who Wasn't There review by John

Ed Crane is basically invisible. He essentially has no hobbies, no desire to better himself, and no passion. I think that he is best summed up by a line in the movie. The dialog starts with his now wife telling him that they should get married after only knowing each other a short while. Ed asks 'dont you want to get to know each other better?' and her reply 'why? does it get any better?' And that is Ed Crane. Just going with the flow. He works as a barber with his brother-in-law essentially because the job just fell in his lap. He suspects that his wife is cheating but he says 'its a free country', basically turning the other cheek. One gets the feeling that this trout swims downstream because it is just easier that way. Well Ed's life is about to hit the rocky part of the water.

The movie starts getting good when he cuts the hair of an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur tells Ed about this dry cleaning idea that he has and that he only needs 10,000 dollars to get it started. For what ever reason Ed is interested; however, he doesnt have the ten grand. So he decides to blackmail his wifes lover.

Now Ed's wife, basically an accountant, has to help her boss, and lover, fix the books of the store he runs so that he can pay off the blackmail. Of course the lover figures out who the blackmailer is eventually and because of this Ed has to fight his wifes lover in what amounts to mortal combat. Someone has to be blamed for the murder and the cops choose Ed's wife because as they see it she killed him over the money. So on comes the trial, and a subplot between Ed and the piano playing daughter of one Ed's regulars(he is a barber remember).

Round and round we go. Ed tries to save his wifes life via the lawyer, and tries to help out the piano playing daughter in the mean time. Well to get right to the point, it turns out that nothing works out for Ed. He looses everything because of the lawyer, and he ends up being convicted of a murder that he didnt commit(which is a nice twist of fate since he got away with the murder of his wife's lover). So in the end this 10,000 dollars kills four people. And thinking of the movie in those terms actually makes it a little more interesting.

Interesting is something that this movie is short on. Realistically how do you make a movie about someone so uninteresting as Ed Crane interesting. That fine fact coupled with the fact that this movie dragged, esspecially at the end makes you wonder just what you spent two hours of your life doing. The best thing that i can say about this movie is that at least ben stiller wasnt in it.


5 out of 10 Jackasses
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