User Reviews

I truly believe that I enjoyed this movie more than anyone should. From Hanks accent, that strangely kept me awaiting his next dialogue sequence, to Wayan's over the top perpetuation of racial stereotypes, I found The Ladykillers to be worth the watch. If you're into spoofs of movies like "Mission Impossible" and those "Oceans" films you should find this at least a nice addition to your mental movie repertoire. Also, if you're a fan of Tom Hanks you should find this, though not the best of his movies, a real breach of character as he delves into murderous plots and dastardly schemes. Best watched when you have nothing else to do Worst watched if you hate Tom Hanks.

The Ladykillers (1955) is an enduring classic of British cinema. It was far and away Ealing's finest hour as a studio. Smooth, polished and blackly funny, its one of the best British comedies ever made. Now the classic tale gets the 21st Century makeover from Ethan and Joel Coen.

The basic story is just as Ealing left it. Five men plan a robbery while posing as musicians for the little old lady putting them up. She eventually finds the money, and the gang have no choice but to bump her off. But everything that can and will go wrong does.

Ealing comedies have always been a big influence on the Coen Brothers. Especially The Ladykillers. They love to make films where hapless folk fall victim to cruel and unusual circumstances. The Ladykillers should have worked really well in their hands. What a crushing disappointment that it doesn't. The Coens have made many marvellous films over the years. But this is one film on they're resume that misfires.

The Coens' have radically reworked the story to suit themselves. E.g. A pet cat instead of pet parrots, bodies dumped into garbage barges and not train carriages. And the Deep South as a setting. I have nothing against changes. The mark of a good remake is to take the original story and find some new novelty on it. But its the approach the Coens' take that kills the story.

Much of the appeal of the original film was the way it took place in a cosy, English domestic setting. Beneath a placid demeanour was a very sinister crime story. As violence and murder began to spiral, it pushed the film from the blackly comical into the truly hysterical.

The anonymity of the original made the violence in it that much more disturbing. And that all the more funny. But the mistake of the Coens' is to make it disturbing, but not to rein any of it in.

Coen films are frequently bizarre. But its an approach that doesn't sit very well with the story. Alec Guinness' Professor Marcus was hardly normal. You could tell that just by looking at him. But he didn't have to do much to convince you of that. One of the major problems with the remake is the way the Coens' have rewritten his character.

Professor Marcus has now become Professor G.H. Dorr, Ph.d. This was Tom Hanks' first time out with the Coen Brothers, and in interviews, he said he'd never seen the original film. If he had, I can guarantee he wouldn't have wanted to do a remake. Because the original film was perfect. The remake only reminds you of how well written and well acted the original was.

Tom Hanks' performance is more distracting than it is engaging. He plays the role with a series of peculiar squeaks, grunts and double-takes. Its impossible to form a connection with such an unusual character. Hanks draws too much attention to himself. Where Alec Guinness was more subtle. He could communicate volumes with a simple look.

The other members of the gang are not much better either. We care little for these people. And like Hanks, they're much too bizarre to identify with. Considering they're supposed to be criminals trying to keep a low profile, it just doesn't make any sense that the Coens' play up their quirks to shrieking, absurd levels.

One thing that seriously works against the film is Marlon Wayans. I must admit to an intense dislike of him as an actor. His performances are annoyingly over the top. And The Ladykillers is no exception. He spends half the time swearing his way through the film. He does more swearing than he does talking. Which feels out of step with the rest of the film. Every time he's on the scene, I wanted to leave the room. I was relieved when he was killed off. The film is all the better for it.

An otherwise fine actor like JK Simmons is wasted. He doesn't get much to do, and his irritable bowel syndrome isn't nearly as funny as the Coens' think it is. Tzi Ma and Ryan Hurst make no distinction on the story at all. They're not the smooth, attuned ensemble Guinness' gang were.

In the role of the little old lady, instead of Mrs Wilberforce, we have Mrs Munson, played by Irma P. Hall. Her sassy, energetic presence is the one ray of sunshine to the film. She's the one thing about the remake the Coens' get right. She's an amusing reversal of what we were expecting. Not too knowing. But not too naive either.

The film is slightly more successful in its second half. As soon as it gets to the point where they have to kill Mrs Munson off, it forces the Coens' to stop springing oddball quirks on us and get on with telling the story. A point where the Coens' trademark black humour finally starts paying off. They die just like the last time, with Mrs Munson completely none the wiser. But the Coens' put they're own sadistic spin on them. Tzi Ma's death is particularly hilarious.

But that's all of 30 minutes before the credits roll. And that's too late in the film to save it. And even then, we never get the feeling that things are getting worse by the second the way we did with the Ealing version. Or the way the Coens' did with Fargo. They fortunately recovered with their next film, the superb No Country For Old Men. But if that film showed the Coens' at their best, The Ladykillers is them at their worst.

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.

CRITIQUE CONTAINS SPOILERS The original 1952 film was about a group of crooks, posing as musicians, who rented a room and an old lady's house in London. She was unwittingly drawn into their plans to steal a large sum of money. The old lady was portrayed by Katie Johnson as a vulnerable woman who, nonetheless, was saved from being implicated in the plot and rose above it.

The remake takes the central story, transfers it to the United States, and makes the old lady anything other than vulnerable. That being the case, the outcome of this film is always clear. She is not and never will get drawn into the plot of the gangsters living in her midst, unwittingly or otherwise. Also seen in the remake is the old lady routinely attacking her lodgers, something only fleetingly glanced at in the original.

When old, classic films are remade the authors should bear in mind what makes them special and try to keep it. In The Ladykillers (2004) this was lost. The studio thus served up another film which didn't benefit the world of cinema one iota.

I haven't seen the original film, The Lady Killers, but I will most assuredly check it out after hearing from all sources that it's much better than this remake. While this is hardly the best Coen Brothers movie of all time, it's certainly worth the trip, if only for the bent and twisted glee with which it is played out. (It's played out and yet NOT "played out.")

Tom Hanks is clearly having a lot of fun in his over-the-top characterization of a deranged buffoon who actually believes himself to be a possible genius, and this is reason enough to see the movie. Irma P. Hall, who's great at slapping and smacking people, is excellent here as well. All the other characters (and they ARE characters) have been written as stereotypes but for some reason that works here too - it adds to the insane quality of the proceedings in a good way. The plot is thin at best but it's the delivery that makes the film worthwhile, particularly the clever way -=-SPOILER ALERT -=- that Hanks' character gets hoisted at the end - literally - by his own petard. Edgar Allen Poe would be very pleased, methinks.