The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
2018
**½
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: Tyne Daly, James Franco, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Heck, Grainger Hines, Zoe Kazan, Harry Melling, Liam Neeson, Tim Blake Nelson, Jonjo O'Neill, Chelcie Ross, Saul Rubinek, Tom Waits
Eight years after True Grit, the Coen brothers return to the Wild West with this long and uneven collection of vignettes. The common denominator between the six stories seems to be that life on the American frontier was deadly and unpredictable. The first two parts, about a cocky gunslinger and an unlucky outlaw, are short, light, and funny. The next three feature a ruthless impresario, a lonely prospector, and an insecure woman in a wagon train, and they are all initially captivating but ultimately overstretched shaggy dog stories. The concluding episode is the least cinematic one. Five people travel in a stagecoach in a short piece, which doesn't seem to a have a beginning, middle, or end. On the plus side, the performances are excellent and, as always, the Coens write terrific dialogue. Four of the stories are original and two of them are based on All Gold Canyon by Jack London and The Girl Who Got Rattled by Stewart Edward White.
