The Coen brothers made names for themselves with such films as Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou? but recently their success has started to decline starting with last year’s lackluster film Intolerable Cruelty starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones but now they have beefed up the starring role in their film a little more with Tom Hanks, but does one man make a movie?
Ladykillers is a remake of a 1955 comedy in which a group of thieves con their way into the life of an unsuspecting church-going lady telling her they need a place to stay and practice their church music, which, of course, is all a ruse but offers them a way to tunnel their way into a nearby casino to pull off the crime of the century.
The entire scheme is led by Tom Hanks who stars as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr III, Ph.D., who has brought together his band of miscreants, but things soon change once their gracious host catches on to their plan.
The writing in this movie is absolutely phenomenal and Hanks manages to deliver it in such original style that you can’t help but love his character and Irma Hall as Mrs. Munson is just as charismatic and likeable, unfortunately it seems that all efforts went into creating these two characters that a lot was lost in the actual design of the story.
The intelligence that went into creating the dialogue for Goldthwait Higginson and the humor used to bring Mrs. Munson to life is so much more humorous than the dumbed down dialogue and personalities created for the rest of the cast. The Ladykillers is a prime example of what happens when originality and intelligence coincide with mainstream Hollywood pictures.
It is an undeniable fact that the Coens are masters at creating excellent characters, which is why it is so upsetting that they didn’t seem to make the same effort in developing the other cast members, most notable would be the role of Gawain MacSam played by Marlon Wayans.
MacSam is the crude talking casino insider that manages to use the same joke over and over again, it should also be mentioned that without his character or at least his character’s language this movie would have been rated PG-13 and would have drawn in a whole other audience.
The Ladykillers is a step up from Intolerable Cruelty but it remains to be a step in the wrong direction when it comes to the Coens’ careers.
