This is one of those old arthouse flicks that shared the shelf with The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the Three Colours trilogy back in the days of VHS. (I must have watched it back in the 90s.) Here Jarmusch has a black-and-white Tom Waits play a non-crook semi-bum who goes down for having a dead man in someone else's trunk. I really enjoyed the early scenes in New Orleans but the arrival of a stilted cliche-ridden Roberto Benigni made the rest grate.
I saw this maybe five years ago. I find it so frustrating as I like many of the actors but can't credit their characters nor the conceit of their lives intersecting in this way. Taking things to the edge time after time is ludicrous; if this was L.A. everyone would have left by then (2004), and it is so cheap of Haggis to ride ragged the red-button issue of race. This is Altman light without the levity. Maybe it gives some context to The Interrupters, which I still have to see.
