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| Ladykillers, The |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 104 |
| Public Rating: 7.68 (127 votes) |
Director: Joel and Ethan Coen |
| MPAA Rating: r.gif |
| Genre: Comedy |
Year: 2004 |
| Writer(s): William Rose (movie of same name), the Coen Brothers (screenplay) |
| Distributor: Touchstone Pictures |
| Reviewed by: Mark Chua |
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Starring: Tom Hanks, Marlon Wayans, Irma Hall, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma, and Ryan Hurst
The greatest criminal minds of all time have finally met their match
Professor Goldswaith H Dorr (Tom Hanks) has hatched the perfect plan to rob a local small-town casino. To pull it off, he enlists the services of the ‘inside man’ Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans), the ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons), ‘the muscle’ Lump Hudson (Ryan Hurst) and The General (Tzi Ma). Together, they not only devise a way to rob the casino, but also come up with a clever ruse to fool Mrs. Munson (Irma P. Hall), the sweet old lady who is renting out the room to the Professor, thus keeping their criminal enterprise top secret.
Tom Hanks is an absolute genius as Professor Dorr. It’s a stark reminder as to why he’s one of, if not the greatest actor of his generation. His ability to take any and every minute situation and totally over blow it into something grand was absolutely hilarious (“Waffles. We must all have waffles, forthwith.”). He would say something that sounded profound and very intelligent, yet in actuality it was completely pointless (“Madame, you are speaking to man who is quiet. Yet, not quiet.”). Everything, from his goofy laugh to his slow, southern accent was delivered with perfect timing. Hanks took The Professor, one that had all the makings and trappings to be a horrendously bad character, and fleshed him out to be someone who was both extremely intelligent and completely incompetent at the exact same time. His performance was right up there with Cast Away and Forrest Gump, and gives Hanks the vehicle he needed to throw his name in the hat for yet another Oscar nomination.
If you’re like me, the one thing about The Ladykillers that may have put you off were those three words that have become synonymous with comedic bomb: starring Marlon Wayans. Surprisingly, even though Marlon Wayans plays the exact same character he’s ever played, there’s one not-so-subtle difference in The Ladykillers: it actually works. He’s obnoxious, irritating and annoying. He’s also very funny. Wayans, along with J.K. Simmons, provided some of the funniest scenes in the movie with their excellent on-screen bantering. Simmons, who most people last saw as J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man, may very well have been the comedic glue. He held together any scene he was in, not by stealing the show, but by making everyone else around him more entertaining. He was mostly responsible for doing something conventional wisdom would say was impossible: he not only made Marlon Wayans watchable, but funny as well. His bantering with every character as the “jack of all trades, master of none”, and his moments when his ‘syndrome’ got the best of him, were pure comedic gold. Irma P. Hall was genuinely sweet as the old, apparently crazy lady. As much as you were cheering for the bad guys, you never wanted anything bad to happen to Mrs. Munson. She’s that sweet, crazy lady neighbour all of us have come in contact with. I thought more could have been done with The General. Tzi Ma is an excellent actor, and with all of the funny parts they were able to come up with for Marlon’s stereotypical young black male character, you would think the Coens would be able to do something with Tzi Ma’s stereotypical older Asian character. I was also really disappointed with Ryan Hurst, who played Lump Hudson. Hurst, who was excellent as Gerry Bertier in Remember the Titans, was atrocious as all of his parts seemed extremely forced, and played like he was a high school kid with no acting experience asked to act mentally challenged. I know his character was dumb, but he looked a person lobotomized.
The entire movie takes place in a small, sleepy, southern town, one of those towns that feel like not much has changed in the last fifty years. The Ladykillers had that feel, too: that folksy, down-to-earth, bluegrass charm. It wasn’t too glitzy, it wasn’t shot too bright, and the movie had the right feel and ambiance. You never actually know when this movie is taking place: It could be 1972, it could be 2004, and that only helped add to the charm.
The plot was your essential casino heist: we’ve seen it in other movies before, (Ocean’s 11 and even Reindeer Games comes to mind) so it’s not ground-breaking stuff. The plot is basically there as a set-piece to allow the hilarious and excellently paced dialogue between the characters. In fact, when you really think about it, robbing a casino is one of the greatest crutches in all of cinema. There’s a lot of money involved, and you essentially have an easy way to turn a group of criminals into heroes, by robbing the one place that everyone in the world hates. It’s either a cesspool of sin, or the place you lost your mortgage money. I work at a casino, and even I hate the things. It paces itself well, from the time each character is introduced to that final bridge scene, it feels like an hour and forty minutes, but it’s definitely an hour and forty minutes well spent.
This movie was irreverent, bizarre, and just outright funny. You immediately get the sense of what kind of comedy this is when you see the town sheriff’s re-election poster. It’s a movie that isn’t for everyone. If you need to see someone getting hit in the testicles, or a pastry with a penis imprint to get your kicks, The Ladykillers will be a hundred minutes you’ll never get back. But if you can laugh at something other than dick and fart jokes, you’ll love The Ladykillers. Go out, get a friend, and go see it. Like Garth Pancake says, “Easiest thing in the World.”
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