The Ladykillers review

2004.03.31 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole

Given the title of the film, I somehow thought there would be more... you know... lady-killing.

The Ladykillers is a madcap heist flick starring Tom Hanks as a demented Colonel Sanders leading a gang of ne'er-do-wells that includes JK Simmons (Spider-Man and TV's Oz) and Marlon Wayans (Scary Movie). It's a remake the 1955 British black comedy of the same name, which starred Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. Marlon Wayans is in the Peter Sellers role. Dress appropriately.

Re-written and re-directed by Joel & Ethan Coen, The Ladykillers is set somewhere in the Deep South, altho I'm not sure exactly where in the Deep South a riverboat casino adjoins the home of a middle-class black Baptist woman. Maybe Tupelo. Hanks and his team pose as classical musicians who want to rent a room and use the lady's basement as a rehearsal hall, but their foul mouths—and lack of musical ability—make the lady suspicious.

Irma P Hall is nice as the southern lady. Her role would have been easy to botch in the writing or the casting. She's goodhearted but cantankerous, undereducated but opinionated; the kind of person we all happily tolerate for brief periods and slip away from as quickly as possible.

The whole cast does a fine job, altho Wayans' "gangsta janitor" bit is wearying after just a few lines of dialog (perhaps he misunderstood when told he was cast in a "black comedy"). Hanks' southern fried gentleman is inspired, but out of place in modern-day Mississippi. The film as a whole might have benefited by setting it in the 1950s. And character actors Diane Delano (Simmons' girlfriend), Stephen Root (the casino manager), and George Wallace (the local sheriff) are wasted in undeveloped roles.

Thruout, there seem to be directorial missteps by the talented Coen brothers. We don't have any idea who Hank's character is; sometimes, he doesn't seem quite human, yet he never seems very evil or even dangerous. We hear rather than see that the conspirators met thru a newspaper advertisement. Why did Lump, the softhearted, mud-for-brains football player, answer an ad for criminals? The gang drives a hearse, but it's never used to any effect.

It's unclear when the lady is in the house or expected to return, so little tension builds. The old gal does something at one point that should earn her hero status among a certain group, so I expected a payoff at the end in which she is honored, but there's no such payoff. And the last 15 minutes are so weak that it hardly seems like a Coen brothers film at all. It seems like a Wile E Coyote cartoon. And not one of the good ones.

We needed to see Hanks' character meeting up with each of the others, some by happenstance and some by design. This would establish his credentials as the criminal mastermind and allow us to see his ability to plan and improvise. The sheriff deserves an early-morning hearse chase thru town, a solemn gospel song accompanying, culminating in Hanks awkwardly talking his way out of trouble. The casino manager should get into a game of cat-and-mouse with Wayans and/or Simmons in the empty casino just when they're needed by the others. None of this happens.

As good as the Coen brothers are, and with the original film to work from, it's hard to understand how they missed the opportunities they did. Still, there are some good laughs, and the film looks and sounds fantastic. The opening visuals and others thruout are just beautifully shot. The gospel music that punctuates the story is rich and alive. Overall, The Ladykillers is good, but not great, with a flawed wackiness some will love but others will find grating.

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