Ladykillers, The (2004)

Synopsis: In the deep American South. Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr Ph.D.(Tom Hanks) rents a room from Mrs Munson (Irma P. Hall). He is looking for a place for his classical music ensemble to rehearse, and her cellar seems eminently suitable. But, it turns out that he actually has criminal intentions.

The Coen Brothers’ irreverent mash-up of the 1955 Ealing Studios classic The Ladykillers was undeservedly disparaged in its day probably because although preserving the storyline it plays fast and loose with the very English sensibility of the original.

Transposed from dreary post-war London to the modern day Bible-belt South, in the central role Tom Hanks plays an anachronistic Southern gentleman with a taste for prolixity and Edgar Allan Poe whilst the landlady is transformed from a bespectacled slip of a woman to a no-nonsense god-fearin’ black woman (Irma P. Hall), The gang of knuckleheads, introduced in an extended opening sequence, are Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons) an over-eager but none-too-bright animal trainer; the jive-talkin' home-boy "inside man" Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans); The General (Tzi Ma) a chain-smoking tunnel-expert and Lump (Ryan Hurst), a mouth-breathing grid-iron player.  All the cast acquit themselves handsomely although realists will have trouble identifying Hanks’ Southern accent which mixed with his tendency to pleonasm at times borders on the unintelligible but which for some reason Mrs Munson is able to understand.

The film exhibits the Coens’ usual unerring facility for genre film, top drawer production values, absurdist humour and fine roots and gospel music (the soundtrack  was produced by T-Bone Burnett who also did the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack for 200's O Brother, Where Art Thou?).  In itself it is funny, as a remake it is inventive enough to make something new out of the source material (including saving a flagging second half) and that it was dismissed by so many at the time of its release is one of those syncopes that sometime occur with deserving films.

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