The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

A lightweight Coen brothers presentation presented as a series of vignettes, of which most worked - the big-named ones with James Franco, Liam Neeson and Zoe Kazan dragged the most. Typically laced with black humour, the stories fell into a certain pattern which ended up diminishing the impact and/or the emotionality of the stories themselves. The Coens still had their wit with them and most of the cast capably handled the material, in particular Tim Blake Nelson, Tom Waits, Tyne Daly and Brendan Gleeson. This might have really worked better as an episodic series maybe in the vein of “Room 104”. Nonetheless, the film retained the usual standard and quality of the Coen brothers, think of it as a portmanteau of “Inside Llewyn Davis” with “No Country for Old Men” and “Fargo” set in “Westworld”.