Movie Review
'The Ladykillers': A Southern-fried delight

By Ted Fry
Special to The Seattle Times

	Tom Hanks stars in the Coen Brothers' new film "The Ladykillers."
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The original version came from Britain's famous Ealing Studios in 1955. It starred Alec Guinness in a character role that continued a string of other notably offbeat comic films cementing his early career, such as "Kind Hearts and Coronets," "The Lavender Hill Mob" and "The Man in the White Suit."

Taking equal credit as writers, directors and producers for the first time (previously they divvied up the titles), Joel and Ethan Coen have kept most of the basics of pitch and plot while attaching their own devices of story and style. They've also kept the dental prosthetics that Guinness used as leader of a bumbling crime outfit, this time jamming them under Tom Hanks' gums.

Movie review Showtimes and trailer ***½ "The Ladykillers," with Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma, Ryan Hurst. Written and directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. 100 minutes. Rated R for language including sexual references. Several theaters.

Hanks digs the false teeth for all they're worth into the role of Goldthwait Higginson Dorr III, Ph.D., who may have been bred from the gene-pool cocktail of Colonel Sanders, Bill Clinton and Truman Capote. Dorr is a born-to-con Southern-fried scoundrel who can run rings of illogical charm around any subject, so long as his mouth can keep babbling and his eyes can keep batting.

Dorr beguiles his way into the life of elderly widow Marva Munson, claiming to be a university professor on sabbatical looking for a place where he and his amateur musician friends can practice their "renaissance rococo" chamber music. He becomes a boarder in her Natchez, Miss., mansion, which is conveniently located on the banks of that famous river where floating casinos fill up with cash every weekend.

It's this booty that Dorr and his ragtag "band" intend to heist by way of a tunnel they'll dig from their rehearsal space in Marva's root cellar.

While the plan starts out well enough and Marva is fooled by Dorr's flowery language and the sounds of (recorded) period music wafting up the cellar stairs, she proves to be no pushover.

When she gets a glimpse of the loot and a hint of the crime, her Christian morals demand justice. The title comes from the gang's bumbling efforts to silence her, even though infighting has already gummed up their caper pretty well. As it turns out, the local sheriff is not necessarily inclined to believe another outrageous story from the widow Munson anyway.

Though Tom Hanks dominates (his fey chuckle, syrupy drawl and overblown banter are hilarious), the ensemble cast boasts an array of individual quirks and robust characters that fall just the right side of wackiness.

Irma P. Hall is particularly good as Marva, whose no-nonsense frown is perfect foil to the extravagant prose poems that constitute Dorr's everyday speech.
 
Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma and Ryan Hurst are a suitably motley crew as Dorr's gang. Their character identifiers — respectively, trash-talking homeboy, downtrodden '60s liberal, former Vietnamese army officer and brainless football jock — are nicely interplayed. Then there's Pickles the cat, a vivid and essential personality in her own right.

If Coen-esque wasn't a familiar term after movies like "Fargo," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Big Lebowski" and especially "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," let it identify the kind of clever poetry that makes everything from visual effects and production design to casting and music supervision such a distinctive treat in "The Ladykillers."

Ted Fry: tedfry@earthlink.net

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