Netflix has a pleasant surprise for fans of the Coen Brothers: an upcoming full feature-length Western called "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," to be released on November 16, according to Konbini. Prospects for the new Coen brother's film look good so far, reports Konbini, as the film has already received a best screenplay award from the Venice International Film Festival, an up and coming rival to the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, often attended by actors with such household name recognition as Nicolas Cage.
The Coen's Western cast includes James Franco
The official Netflix trailer (below) for "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" shows James Franco in a cowboy role. According to Konbini, the cast also includes Liam Neeson and singer Tom Waits, each of whom will play a legend of the West in a Coen brothers film that is organized into six chapters of action.
The Coen brothers are known for producing quirky, off-center, and darkly comic films on the big screen. We may remember the scene from "Miller's Crossing" in which actor Albert Finney shoots up a house to the tune of an Irish lullaby. Or perhaps we may reminisce about the Jeff Bridges (seen as "The Champ" in Kingsman: The Golden Circle") as The Dude, with his penchant for slurping down White Russians while disentangling himself from a criminal plot in "The Big Lebowski." That said, the first Netflix Coen brothers film is highly anticipated by audiences.
The Coen Western film has six chapters
According to the Omaha World-Herald, the plot line of the Coen brothers' "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is divided into six chapters, each of which has a particular focus, including a high-plains drifter, a singing cowboy, a traveling show, a stagecoach, a prospector, and a woman on a wagon train. The chapters are filmed in multiple locations, with the last sequence (the woman on the wagon train) having been filmed in Nebraska, according to the Omaha World-Herald. The chapters are intended to be interwoven comedies of the Old West. So far, the reviews for this upcoming Netflix feature film are good. The Omaha World-Herald reports that the film has a 94 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and that The Guardian gave "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" five stars, calling the film an "enjoyable" and "disturbing" anthology of stories from the Old West.
Apparently, comic vignettes may twist suddenly into scenes of dark violence.
But this is the cultivated style of the Coen brothers film, to mix the comic with the tragic, the beauty of life with its more gruesome undertones. On November 16, it looks like we can expect from Netflix a new, delightful, and terribly terrific iteration of Coen brothers filmmaking with "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs."