Crane, Ed. (The Man Who Wasn’t There), an unemotional, Chesterfield chain-smoking barber with dreams of becoming a dry cleaner. Ed believes his wife Doris, an alcoholic bookkeeper who hasn’t slept with him in years, to be having affair with Big Dave who runs Nirdlinger’s, a major department store in the town.

Ed was turned onto the idea of this “new technology” called dry cleaning by a man named Creighton Tolliver, a customer at the barbershop. Tolliver tells Ed he needs $10,000 from him if he wishes to invest so Ed decides to blackmail Big Dave anonymously for the money.

The unsuspecting Big Dave ironically approaches Ed about the matter and asks Ed what he should do. Ed of course recommends Dave pay and he does so. Ed takes the money to Tolliver who then disappears, making Ed believe he’s been swindled.

Again Big Dave contacts Ed, this time to arrange a late night meeting at the department store. Unfortunately for Ed, Tolliver had also approached Big Dave, and Dave, thinking the sum of the investment being the same as the blackmail was too much of a coincidence, beats Tolliver until he confesses and then finishes the job. Now, understanding the angle and angered by Ed’s betrayal, Big Dave attacks Ed, strangling him until Ed stabs him in the neck with Big Dave’s cigar cutter.

Ed makes it back home to find Doris drunk and passed out. As it turns out, Doris and Big Dave were indeed having an affair and seeing as to how she has no alibi, she becomes the prime suspect in his murder case. Since all the lawyers in town seem to be incompetent, Ed hires the expensive Freddy Riedenschneider from Sacramento, who finds the most extravagant hotel he can to stay in for the duration of the trial.

As the three try to concoct a defense strategy for Doris, Ed admits to the murder only to be brushed off by Riedenschneider who thinks Ed is making up a story just as a cover. Instead, the expensive lawyer comes up with the genius plan to ruin Big Dave’s reputation by showing evidence to the court Dave Brewster was lying about his heroism in the war and that the real killer was trying to blackmail Big Dave about said lies, but after the pregnant Doris hangs herself in her cell Riedenschneider decides to just leave town, Ed’s life savings in tow.

Meanwhile, throughout the trial, Ed has been visiting his friend’s teenage daughter, a pianist named Birdy. Ed thinks she is talented and wants her to be successful so he offers to pay for her to take lessons, but after her failed audition for the instructor, Birdy has her own offer for Ed on the way back home. As she starts to go down on him, in an effort to avoid oncoming traffic, Ed swerves off road and crashes only to wake up in the hospital with two police officers standing over him arresting him for the murder of Tolliver.

Tolliver’s body was found in his submerged car by a boy swimming in the lake. Inside the man’s briefcase: Ed’s signed contract. This leads the police to believe Ed convinced his wife to steal the money from Nirdlinger’s and that he beat Tolliver to death.

Ed is forced to mortgage his house and rehire Riedenschneider whose opening statement to the jury is cut short by Frank attacking Ed, thus causing a mistrial. Ed is now completely broke and is handed over to a cheap local attorney who advises Ed to give himself over to the mercy of the court and plead guilty. Ed listens. Plan fails. Ed is sentenced to death.

While on death row, Ed decides to write down his story to sell to a pulp magazine which pays him per word. The movie ends as he is being walked to and strapped into the electric chair, all the while thinking about how unhappy he is about the consequences of his actions, but how happy he is he took action in the first place and put some excitement in his life.

Ed is played by Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton, best known for 1996’s Sling Blade which he wrote, directed, and starred in. The Man Who Wasn’t There is not the only time Thornton has worked with the Coen brothers; he also played oil tycoon Howard D. Doyle in 2003’s Intolerable Cruelty.—Aron Dailey