Coen brothers' 'Ballad of Buster Scruggs' spins dark, funny Western tales

“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” - ★ ★ ★ ★

In the Coen brothers' brilliant new film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” an existential Western told in six unrelated chapters, the cowboy cliches pile up quickly, like the body count.

A gunslinger, a bank robber, a prospector, a trapper, and a gal in search of a good man all commingle with so many other saddle-worn tropes of the oater genre that the film at first feels like a cartoon.

In fact, its first chapter, the one that lends “Ballad” its title, is a kind of cowboy comic book. Starring Tim Blake Nelson as the titular Buster, a traveling singer and gunslinger, this short take on the genre is both funny and morbid, signaling the Coens' intention to chew on the theme of human mortality like a cowpoke nurses his chawin' tobacky.

That single-minded focus continues in the next installment, in which James Franco plays a bank robber who has been sentenced to death by hanging. Depending on how you look at things, he's either the luckiest or unluckiest man in the world, as his execution goes (darkly) comically awry.

But by the time Chapter Two has gotten underway, it's clear that the Coens' aim is something more than laughter.

“Meal Ticket,” the third episode, stars Liam Neeson and Harry Melling as itinerant entertainers. Their act consists of Melling's character - a quadruple amputee known as Harrison the Wingless Thrush, who cannot feed, bathe or relieve himself without the assistance of Neeson's Impresario - reciting verse and oratory. It is here, in this O. Henryesque tale, that the Coens find the true voice of this anthology, which is ultimately much more dark, and satisfying, than comedy.

If that's your definition of entertainment - and it is mine - “Ballad” paints a deliciously dismal portrait of the human condition.

Among the many standout performances by actors whose names you will recognize are those of Zoe Kazan as a woman in search of romance and Brendan Gleeson as a laconic bounty hunter.

Jonjo O'Neill, as Gleeson's partner, pretty much steals the show, or at least wraps it up nicely with a ghoulish bow, in the film's final chapter. “The Mortal Remains,” the longest and best of the film's segments, situates O'Neill's dapper Englishman in a stagecoach filled with four other strangers, all under a roof that is also carrying the corpse of an outlaw. As the coach hurtles through the advancing darkness, he regales his fellow travelers with a creepy tale.

“The Mortal Remains” brings all these tales together beautifully, by which I mean in a coda that is somber and hauntingly unsettled, like the last note of a dirge. Its music lingers in the air long after the closing credits.

<b>Starring:</b> Jonjo O'Neill, Brendan Gleeson, Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Zoe Kazan

<b>Directed by:</b> Ethan and Joel Coen

<b>Other:</b> A Netflix release; at Chicago's Century Centre and available for streaming on Netflix. Rated R for violence. 132 minutes