Ladykillers: Movie Review, DVD Review (2004)
9/18/2007 Posted by Admin
Knocking off a woman, trouble ensues
(Originally published 2004)
Written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 104 minutes, rated R.
The Joel and Ethan Coen movie, "The Ladykillers," is a loose remake of the 1955 Ealing original starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers.
As written by William Rose, that film - a comedy of manners set in London - found Guinness and company using a sweet old lady's house as a base of operations to pull off a daring heist. The nerve of them, I know, but the movie worked.
In the Coens' hands, that story - a comedy of grotesque manners set in southern-fried, rural Mississippi - follows a group of eccentric crooks using a God-fearing old lady's house as the base of operations to steal $1.6 million from a riverboat casino. The nerve of them, I know, but the movie works.
Just as in the original, the plot turns to getting rid of the woman, here played by the marvelous Irma P. Hall ("Soul Food") in a great comic performance, when she proves to be more trouble than she's worth.
The film, which the Coens wrote, offers several big laughs, some of which are so outrageous - the untimely demise of a dog, the botched holdup of a doughnut shop - that audiences will likely be talking about them after the show.
The movie also allows Tom Hanks to further remove himself from his American Everyman persona, which he's been pushing away from since 2002's "Road to Perdition" and later that year in "Catch Me if You Can."
Hanks, as the frothy, melodious Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, Ph.D. - the chief crook with a high-end vocabulary who heads this operation- is a snorting, lascivious fraud with a Vandyke beard and a dingy white suit that would look like a Tom Wolfe knockoff if it weren't so obviously cheap.
With his pudgy face and piggish eyes, he recalls Tennessee Williams by way of Foghorn Leghorn. He's a caricature - as are all of the characters in this movie - and he's obviously having a great time hamming it up in the role.
Supporting players include Marlon Wayans as a gun-wielding casino janitor, Tzi Ma as a smoky, former Vietnamese general who sports a Hitler moustache, Ryan Hurst as a hunk of beef who is somehow dumber than he looks, and J.K. Simmons as gung-ho bomb expert Garth Pancake, a man whose love for the mountainous Mountain Girl (Diane Delano) apparently knows few limits.
The movie is filled with great, intentionally repetitive touches, and a gospel soundtrack by T Bone Burnett that could raise the dead.
This isn't the Coens' best movie - that still belongs to "Fargo." But it is what it is and it does what it does well.
Grade: B+
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Written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 104 minutes, rated R.
The Joel and Ethan Coen movie, "The Ladykillers," is a loose remake of the 1955 Ealing original starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers.
As written by William Rose, that film - a comedy of manners set in London - found Guinness and company using a sweet old lady's house as a base of operations to pull off a daring heist. The nerve of them, I know, but the movie worked.
In the Coens' hands, that story - a comedy of grotesque manners set in southern-fried, rural Mississippi - follows a group of eccentric crooks using a God-fearing old lady's house as the base of operations to steal $1.6 million from a riverboat casino. The nerve of them, I know, but the movie works.
Just as in the original, the plot turns to getting rid of the woman, here played by the marvelous Irma P. Hall ("Soul Food") in a great comic performance, when she proves to be more trouble than she's worth.
The film, which the Coens wrote, offers several big laughs, some of which are so outrageous - the untimely demise of a dog, the botched holdup of a doughnut shop - that audiences will likely be talking about them after the show.
The movie also allows Tom Hanks to further remove himself from his American Everyman persona, which he's been pushing away from since 2002's "Road to Perdition" and later that year in "Catch Me if You Can."
Hanks, as the frothy, melodious Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, Ph.D. - the chief crook with a high-end vocabulary who heads this operation- is a snorting, lascivious fraud with a Vandyke beard and a dingy white suit that would look like a Tom Wolfe knockoff if it weren't so obviously cheap.
With his pudgy face and piggish eyes, he recalls Tennessee Williams by way of Foghorn Leghorn. He's a caricature - as are all of the characters in this movie - and he's obviously having a great time hamming it up in the role.
Supporting players include Marlon Wayans as a gun-wielding casino janitor, Tzi Ma as a smoky, former Vietnamese general who sports a Hitler moustache, Ryan Hurst as a hunk of beef who is somehow dumber than he looks, and J.K. Simmons as gung-ho bomb expert Garth Pancake, a man whose love for the mountainous Mountain Girl (Diane Delano) apparently knows few limits.
The movie is filled with great, intentionally repetitive touches, and a gospel soundtrack by T Bone Burnett that could raise the dead.
This isn't the Coens' best movie - that still belongs to "Fargo." But it is what it is and it does what it does well.
Grade: B+
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