The Ladykillers Movie Review

The Ladykillers (2004)

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Written by: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (screenplay), William Rose (movie "The Ladykillers") 
Directed by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen 
Starring: Tom Hanks, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Ryan Hurst, Bruce Campbell
Rated: R
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Plot
A Southern professor leads a band of would-be robbers on a heist.

Verdict
This isn't a bad movie, but the Coen brothers have made such great films that compared to their body of work this is lackluster. It's obvious Tom Hanks has fun chewing the scenery, but it's not as clever as it should be. If you go in with low expectations, you will enjoy it. Just don't compare it to the Coen brothers other movies.
It depends.

Review
I could never pin down the setting for this movie. It looks like a seventies movie with Tom Hanks dressed up as a poor man's Colonel Sanders complete with cape, but then the cars are from the eighties and even mid nineties. Marlon Wayans style is straight from the early nineties. Hurst's football uniform looks like it's from the fifties. These are odd anachronisms when the Coen brothers usually nail every small detail.

Just as the time period is hit or miss, the beginning is all over the place as we're introduced to the crew before we know their roles. Hanks is the leader, and you can tell he had fun using his best deep South voice. He is fun to watch in an atypical role, and while all of the cast plays side character promoted to a main roles, they don't mesh. Wayans stands out the most as he seems to be a few decades ahead of everyone else. This just seems a little too slapstick for the Coen brothers. It's never as smart as their other films.

The tale of bank robbers is tired, but this is well done. I like the cast of characters, save for Marlon Wayans, but they lack chemistry despite posing as a classical band while they dig a tunnel in a little old ladies basement.

Good, but not Coen good.

The heist crew has a clever plan, but Oceans 11 (2001) has become the prototypical heist movie. This just doesn't compare. This went for over the top characters instead of a sense of cool. We even get the required discord among the crew. This could work if the crew had chemistry.

This even has a strong hint of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) with the characters throwing objects off a bridge onto a trash barge. I had to wonder how many trash barges pass under the bridge. It works out extremely conveniently when they throw multiple things off the bridge in a single night. While the ending is completely over the top, the entire movie has been that way.

I like Ms. Munson's ending, and the movie set that up early on and delivered the payoff. It's not a bad movie, and it's certainly entertaining, but it's hard not to think about No Country for Old Men (2007) (read my review), Fargo (1996) (read my review),  and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) (read my review) and see how far removed The Ladykillers is removed from the Coen brothers' other work.