The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

(MA15+) ★★★★½

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen.

Cast: Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Stephen Root, Liam Neeson, Harry Melling, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, Bill Heck, Grainger Hines, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Jonjo O’Neill, Saul Rubinek, Chelcie Ross.

Service: Netflix

The likeness was uncanny.

The Coen Brothers rarely do the expected.

Over more than three decades they've bounced from gangsters to stoners, from Odyssean journeys to inept spy games, from Ealing remakes to New York folk singers. Trying to predict what they would do next is a fool's game.

But even if you were so inclined as to play the game and guess what the Coens have up their sleeve, "straight-to-Netflix Western anthology" would have been at long odds. Yet here we are.

The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs is six tales, unconnected except for their western settings. The titular tale is a dark take on the singing cowboy trope, with Nelson as the eponymous warbling gunslinger, Near Algodones sees a hapless bandit (Franco) try to rob a seemingly unprotected bank in the middle of nowhere, Meal Ticket is an unsettlingly bleak story of a travelling limbless actor (Melling) and his carer (Neeson), All Gold Canyon is an emotional rollercoaster regarding a grizzled prospector (Waits) and his quest for gold, The Gal Who Got Rattled is a wagon train romance that takes an unexpected turn, and The Mortal Remains sees a stagecoach of strangers share a ride to the next town.

As you would expect with the Coens, each segment is gorgeously written, with the lyrical qualities of the dialogue really singing in the mouths of an all-round talented cast. Nelson, who gets to deliver his eloquent verbiage directly to camera for the most part, particularly revels in the writing, while the final segment rolls along entirely (and to great effect) on the strength of its words as there is no action.

And then there's All Gold Canyon and Meal Ticket which have next-to-no dialogue in them at all. It's a testament to their incredible skills as writers that the Coens are equally at home with the word tap turned on or off.

The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs also wonderfully captures that hint of the absurd that creeps into their filmic realities. It's perhaps best exemplified in Near Algodones where the strange occurrences pile-up hilariously, and in the eponymous story, which is flat-out funny and silly in classic Coen fashion. Five-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (who worked with the Coens on Inside Llewyn Davis) helps to nudge that reality into a heightened place, while simultaneously giving each tale its own look. At the same time the costume and set design, with a few CG flourishes, help make this one of the best looking films of the year.

The only thing missing for mine is a link between the stories, in particular some kind of thematic connection to take this to the next level. Maybe it's already there and will reveal itself on further viewings, much like the philosophical intricacies of The Big Lebowski or the metaphorical and metaphysical ideas nestled in Barton Fink. But for now, this is just six (excellent) narratives that stop and start and stand alone.

Everyone will have their favourite narrative and while it's a tough decision, I'll take All Gold Canyon. Waits' fantastic performance and the story's ups and downs making it the most gripping of the six, but there's not a weak link in the chain. It almost makes up for the fact Waits hasn't made an album in seven years.

As previously stated, it's near-impossible to guess what the Coens will do next. One can only hope that it's as good as The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs.