Review of The Ladykillers (2004) by Keegan A — 16 Mar 2011

Clearly Tom Hanks is having the time of his life as Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, a Southern gentlemen with the eloquence of a poet and the ambition of a thief. Hanks runs with it. But the prfessor is no good samaritan. He's set on robbing a riverboat casino in Mississippi and murder the old widow, Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall, lovely) standing in his way. Hanks is under the direction of the Coens, Joel and Ethan, and it seems like a comic match made in heaven.

Were it anything close. The Ladykillers is actually a remake of a 1955 British comedy of the same name that starred the great Alec Guinness as the professor.The Coens take the same premise and put it in a new setting, if for no other reason other than to see how it would work. It's a fascinating effort, but it's also, sadly, quite middling.

Hanks still manages to breathe some real fire into this clunky comedy, along with his misfit co-horts: Lump (Ryan Hurst), a dimwitted football player; the General (Tzi Ma), a Vietnamese tunnel expert; Pancake (the always reliable J.K. Simmons), an explosives expert; and Gawain (Marlon Wayans), the inside at the casino. They plan, as in the original, is to use Mrs. Munson's cellar to create a tunnel into the casino, masquerading as a band of musicians needing the space for rehearsal to throw her off. And though Mrs. Munson won't allow any of that 'hip-hoppity' music, the Coens use it anyways on the soundtrack, along with a number of stirring gospel numbers that also give the script some much-needed life. And just as in the original, and in Coen brothers movies in general, bodies start piling up. The killings are meant to be humorous and invoke laughs. But the original did it way better.