The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs Review: 4 Ups & 4 Downs

2. The Lazy Wraparound

It's always fun to see what sort of wraparound story an anthology film has, but in typically subversive form, the Coens decide against it completely and merely have the stories taking place as part of a novel compendium of American frontier stories. Yup, that's it.

If you hadn't read much about the movie beforehand, you probably assumed Tim Blake Nelson's Buster Scruggs was part of the wraparound - his name being in the title and all - yet there's sadly no human, character element guiding us through this story.

As a result it feels like a little charm is missing, because casting a beloved character actor - perhaps even a Coen regular like John Turturro - as a narrator could've been a lot of fun.

Ultimately it feels like the Coens should've come up with a more imaginative transition between shorts than just showing an anonymous hand turning a few pages of a book.