It’s Hard To Tell What The Coen Brothers

Are Up To This Time Around

Can one performance make a movie? Does filmmaking ability override potential incongruities?

These are the questions that have been rattling around in my head since I saw The Ladykillers, the latest movie from brothers Ethan and Joel Coen (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona and Fargo, among others), and their first teaming with actor Tom Hanks, who stars as Goldthwait Higgenson Dorr, PhD, a southern gentlemen with more on his mind than mint juleps.

The Ladykillers is an intermittently hilarious film with more than a few odd touches and several head-scratching moments in which you’re not quite sure what the filmmakers are trying to do. I’m usually of a mind to give them the benefit of the doubt because they’re such film buffs and enthusiasts that their passion usually rubs off on the audience... even if we don’t quite get all that they’re trying to do.

But there are a few moments, especially those involving some heavily profanity-laced tirades, where they really do try our patience as well as our high regard for their talents.

The Coen brothers’ newest effort is actually a remake of an older film, a 1955 British film of the same name starring the original Obi-Wan Kenobi, Alec Guinness, and a pre-Pink Panther Peter Sellers. This time, instead of across the pond, the comedy is set in the American South, and here, Hanks is a hoot, a mix of Colonel Sanders and Mark Twain, as the foppishly mannered, grandiloquently speaking “Professor.”

This southern dandy rents a room from an elderly Southern Baptist woman, Mrs. Munson (Irma P. Hall), under the pretense of needing a place to practice renaissance music with his cohorts, but with the express intent of using the house’s root cellar to tunnel out to the safe of a riverboat casino. But Ocean’s Eleven this ain’t, and Dorr’s associates are a motley crew of mutts, including a live-wire janitor (Marlon Wayans), an almost silent Vietnamese tactician named “The General” (Tzi Ma), a talkative munitions expert named Pancake (J.K. Simmons), and the brawn of the team, an oafish football player named Lump (Ryan Hurst, who did the football thing quite effectively in Remember the Titans).

The Ladykillers carries on the Coen brothers’ tradition of having an eccentric lead role played by a major actor stretching his or her legs (i.e., Frances McDormand in Fargo, Paul Newman in The Hudsucker Proxy, George Clooney in O Brother, Nicolas Cage in Arizona, and the list goes on), and as his first comedic role in some time, Hanks takes to this like the proverbial duck to water. His tongue-twisting dialogue is spoken perfectly, his William F. Buckley-like vocal tones are hilarious, and his breathy cackle is hysterical, even though we may have seen it numerous times already in commercials and trailers. And when he matches wits with his increasingly suspicious landlady, the interplay between Hanks and Hall is priceless.

Perhaps the biggest problem, or at least difficulty, with the film, despite being meticulously filmed and staged, is the unclear nature of what the Coen brothers are trying to achieve. Is this simply a broad comedy, or is it a comedic morality play? Hall’s Mrs Munson is an interesting mix of noisy neighbor yet naïve churchgoer, and though she looks the part of the stereotypical “big mama” (she even sits in a rocking chair with her knitting and speaks to the portrait of her deceased husband... a portrait whose expression changes at various points in the movie), I was intrigued to discover that some of her appearance is enhanced by make-up to make her an even more big, big mama, if you will.

There’s also a dichotomy between the mellifluous language of Dorr, the more simple, yet clean speech of Munson, and the curse-ridden language of Dorr’s accomplices (so be forewarned, there are numerous “F-bombs” dropped in the course of this movie). Again, it may all be part of the Coen brothers’ attempt to craft a keen morality play, but it simply doesn’t play quite smoothly.

The Ladykillers is a funny movie, and perhaps is worth the price of admission just to see Hanks having some fun, but it’s not completely satisfying, especially considering its pedigree.

The Ladykillers is rated R for strong language and some sexual references.