I've admired some of the Coen's other movies, and Tom Hanks gives a smooth comic performance here.
That's about it.
It's not a very funny movie. It's not entirely lacking in the Coen's sort of irony and wit -- two of the gangsters constantly at each others' throats are a jive-talking rastafarian-looking black kid and an older white guy who was a freedom rider. But the humor is driven in with a sledgehammer, what there is of it. While demonstrating how safe it is to handle a kind of explosive, the expert hits it with a hammer and blows his finger off. There follows an argument about whether or not it can be sewn back on like Bobbitt's penis. The black kid claims it can be although it might "maybe look like a chewed up frankfurter." In the original the crooks execute a simple but nicely choreographed heist on a city street and involve their old landlady in the retrieval of the money. Here, the crooks tunnel into the vault. Why? Digging tunnels and having accidents (the fuse that stops, then restarts at the wrong moment) are easier to do than figuring out jokes that might take place during a street robbery. And the old landlady is in no way involved in the plan. She stumbles on the gang by accident while the air is filled with fluttering bills. She's also not old and delicate. She's in late middle age, energetic, and robust.
Well. Others might enjoy it more than I did, especially if they're not familiar with the unsurpassable original. I personally am getting awfully tired of remakes. What a dearth of creativity they portend. They are beginning to make parodies of parodies. Shot-for-shot remakes of classics that were in no need of remaking. What next? "Citizen Kane" starring Keanu Reeves in Splendocolor? "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Part Two: The Return of Gold Hat"? "Viagra Comes to Golden Pond"? Another remake of "Reefer Madness"? You see where I'm going with this. The MBAs have taken over the asylum.
That's about it.
It's not a very funny movie. It's not entirely lacking in the Coen's sort of irony and wit -- two of the gangsters constantly at each others' throats are a jive-talking rastafarian-looking black kid and an older white guy who was a freedom rider. But the humor is driven in with a sledgehammer, what there is of it. While demonstrating how safe it is to handle a kind of explosive, the expert hits it with a hammer and blows his finger off. There follows an argument about whether or not it can be sewn back on like Bobbitt's penis. The black kid claims it can be although it might "maybe look like a chewed up frankfurter." In the original the crooks execute a simple but nicely choreographed heist on a city street and involve their old landlady in the retrieval of the money. Here, the crooks tunnel into the vault. Why? Digging tunnels and having accidents (the fuse that stops, then restarts at the wrong moment) are easier to do than figuring out jokes that might take place during a street robbery. And the old landlady is in no way involved in the plan. She stumbles on the gang by accident while the air is filled with fluttering bills. She's also not old and delicate. She's in late middle age, energetic, and robust.
Well. Others might enjoy it more than I did, especially if they're not familiar with the unsurpassable original. I personally am getting awfully tired of remakes. What a dearth of creativity they portend. They are beginning to make parodies of parodies. Shot-for-shot remakes of classics that were in no need of remaking. What next? "Citizen Kane" starring Keanu Reeves in Splendocolor? "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Part Two: The Return of Gold Hat"? "Viagra Comes to Golden Pond"? Another remake of "Reefer Madness"? You see where I'm going with this. The MBAs have taken over the asylum.