'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs' Film Review: Coen Brothers Western Anthology Makes for an Uneven Binge

It’s only fitting that the Coen Brothers new project is backed by Netflix since it’s a Western-themed anthology film that plays like the forced-binge experience of an anthology TV series.

While the Coens claim in the press notes for “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” that they were inspired by “those films made in Italy in the ’60s which set side-by-side the work of different directors on a common theme,” they were apparently so inspired that they made an anthology movie as wildly uneven as the ones they’re aping. (The 1968 “Spirits of the Dead” gave us Fellini’s sublime “Toby Dammit,” yes, but no one ever talks about Roger Vadim’s silly contribution “Metzengerstein.”)

None of the Coens’ tales of the Old West is an outright dud, but the movie never matches the eponymous opening sequence, starring Tim Blake Nelson as a white-hatted singing cowboy with a tune in his heart, a kind word for everyone he meets, and an exceedingly itchy trigger finger. It’s like the collaboration Gene Autry and Sam Peckinpah never made, and it captures the Coens at their best: self-reflexive, absurdist, witty and outrageous.

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The rest of the film struggles to match this opening bit’s energy, but there are delights to be discovered along the way: James Franco’s would-be bank robber cheats death, only to have death cheat back; a traveling theatrical producer (Liam Neeson) reaches a crossroads with his unusual but talented orator (Harry Melling, “The Lost City of Z”); a grizzled prospector (Tom Waits, who can do “grizzled” with one hand tied behind his back) makes a discovery and must protect it; an unmarried pioneer woman (Zoe Kazan) tentatively explores romance with the wagonmaster (Bill Heck, “Pit Stop”) on her way to Oregon; a quintet of passengers (including Brendan Gleeson, Tyne Daly and Saul Rubinek) take a stagecoach to an uncertain destination.

The fact that these vignettes may have been originally conceived as discrete TV episodes comes through pretty clearly, as there don’t seem to be many unifying themes or ideas at play, except maybe for a running gag that randomly inserts a French person into almost every story for no apparent reason. Some of them make the case that the American West was settled almost entirely by rogues, thieves and murderers, while others contradict that notion.

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The change in perspective does allow the Coens to explore different facets of their own interests in Westerns as a genre; the wagon-train sequence calls to mind John Ford, while the James Franco tale (mainly a shaggy-dog story that builds to a nifty punchline) has more of the spiky humor of Sergio Leone. And they’ve perhaps never leaned into the grandeur of nature as they do with the prospector story, laden with big sky and tall trees and rushing rivers.

The Coens and casting director Ellen Chenoweth (“Suburbicon”) skillfully blend familiar faces with relatively new ones. Among the names to remember here are Melling (giving a great performance as a performer, and you’d never guess he used to play Dudley Dursley in the “Harry Potter” movies) and Heck, as well as Irish actor Jonjo O’Neill (“On Chesil Beach”), who plays Gleeson’s business partner; he’s got a skill for that specific brand of Coen acting — almost but not quite overdoing it, invisible pivots from comedy to menace — that suggest they’ll be using him again soon.

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Not that the marquee names aren’t terrific as well. Daly and Rubinek (and Chelcie Ross, as an eccentric old trapper) have a hilarious anti-chemistry, made all the more amusing by the close quarters of the stagecoach. And Kazan has perhaps never been better, playing a woman unafraid to venture deeper into the untamed West because she reckons it can’t be any worse than what she’s leaving behind.

“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” will be, at best, a charming footnote in the Coens’ career, a project they enjoyed doing, and possibly even more enjoyed turning into a film so they can keep their résumé free of episodic television. As Netflix binges go, it’s a pretty good one, but be ready to love some episodes more than others.

All Coen Brothers' Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best (Photos)

17. The Ladykillers (2004)

A very poor remake of a classic 1950s British comedy starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, this film is unnecessary and off in every way.
Buena Vista Pictures
16. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

A disaster where every rhythm and line reading feels horribly off, this period comedy gave Coen critics all the ammunition they would need to write them off as sarcastic pastiche artists giggling over private jokes.
Warner Bros.
15. The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

A self-consciously arty tale of existential despair, shot in black and white, that could also be called "The Film That Wasn't There."
Focus Features
14. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

A perfectly nice movie with lots of music, where George Clooney gets a chance to sing, but nowhere near their best work.
20th Century Fox
13. Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

This is as close to a standard commercial movie as the Coens have ever come, a sharp-edged romantic comedy vehicle for George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, enjoyable but not fully theirs (the script was worked on by other writers).
Universal
12. Blood Simple (1984)

The first Coen movie is a now-neglected noir, well-shot and well-played, but mainly a hint of things to come.
MGM
11. Raising Arizona (1987)

The Coens' second film, a boisterous comedy, is a real love-it-or-hate-it proposition. It's noisy and cartoonish and obnoxious, and it seems either delightful or awful based upon the mood you are in when you see it.
20th Century Fox
10. Barton Fink (1991)

An odd film about a Clifford Odets-like writer (John Turturro) trying to keep his integrity in old Hollywood, most memorable for the fearsome performance of John Goodman as insurance salesman Charlie Meadows.
20th Century Fox
9. Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Mercilessly accurate, inventive, and cold look at old Hollywood, filled with obscure inferences and references. Many poetic ideas, like having gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons split up into two sisters played by Tilda Swinton, a homoerotic musical sailor number with Channing Tatum that is notable for the distant and unenthused way it's filmed, and George Clooney at his best as a dim Robert Taylor-like movie star. Is it religiously conservative or just misanthropic? Time will tell.
Universal
8. True Grit (2010)

Unexpected and very graceful, this loving adaptation of Charles Portis' wordy novel displayed the Coens' eye for period detail and their love for unusual wordplay. The last half hour or so is as beautiful and deadly as anything they have ever done.
Paramount Pictures
7. Miller's Crossing (1990)

The Coen brothers' third movie, a tale of gangsters and crime in the Prohibition era, was a first glimpse of their pared-down strength and their tough treatment of dramatic material, nowhere more apparent than in the extended scene where John Turturro's character begs for his life.
20th Century Fox
6. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

This bleak and unforgiving tale of a non-popular musician (Oscar Isaac) trying to make his way in the 1960s folk scene in Greenwich Village has the internal logic and forward progression of a cut-to-the-bone first-person novel. It makes you feel what it's like to be far from success or comfort, as epitomized by the moment when Isaac's Llewyn steps into a cold puddle as he walks on a wintry street and gets a shoe and sock all wet.
CBS Films
5. The Big Lebowski (1998)

A fan favorite, this shaggy dog story made a stoner icon out of Jeff Bridges's The Dude. Best pot-fuddled line reading from Bridges: "Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women, man!"
Gramercy Pictures
4. Fargo (1996)

An instant classic, a tale of violence in a small town that was an early indicator of just how fresh and unexpected a Coen brothers movie could be. Who can forget the scene where Mike Yanagita (Steve Park), an old school friend of police officer Marge (Frances McDormand), suddenly confesses his love for her?
Gramercy Pictures
3. A Serious Man (2009)

The dark comedy is suffused with a slow-burning and Kafka-esque dread, and it bears comparison to any similar Saul Bellow or Philip Roth novel of the late 1960s and early 1970s in its clear-eyed moral rigor.
Focus Features
2. Burn After Reading (2008)

A broad and unsettling comedy that is loose and instinctive and moves like a dream. Brad Pitt was never better or funnier than as gym trainer Chad Feldheimer, a dumb guy who lets the equally dumb Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand, hilarious) draw him into a CIA plot. The way the Coens toy with audience expectation is masterful.
Focus Features
1. No Country for Old Men (2007)

An unforgettable noir suffused with existential dread. Javier Bardem's bowl-cutted killer entered the cultural zeitgeist, but Tommy Lee Jones's final monologue is equally memorable in its decent-minded and fed-up despair. Plus, the dog that chases Josh Brolin over water is like something out of a nightmare.
Miramax