The greatest criminal minds of all time have finally met their match.
Academy Award-winner Tom Hanks teams up for the first time with Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen for this retelling of the critically acclaimed 1955 comedy, The lady-killers. Hanks stars as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr III, PhD, a charlatan professor who's assembled a gang of "experts" for the heist of the century. The thieves: experts in explosions, tunnelling, muscle, and the critical
"inside man". The base of operations: the root cellar of an unsuspecting, church-going little old lady named Mrs Munson (Irma P Hall). The ruse: the five need a place to practice their church music. The problem: it quickly becomes evident that Dorr's thieves lack the mental capacity to do the job. The bigger problem: they have all seriously underestimated their upstairs host. When Mrs Munson stumbles onto their plot and threatens to notify the authorities, the felonious five decide to do her in. After all, how hard can it be to knock off one old lady?
Special Agent Matti
Ah, a lot is explained when you learn that The lady-killers is a remake - by a couple of literate Americans - of a 1950s British black comedy. The characters are strangely (ie absurdly) incompetent. The protagonist - Goldthwait Higginson Dorr III, PhD - is a blithering idiot. The only vaguely human character is the antagonist and victim, Mrs Munson, and she's a Southern Baptist, overweight, big-breasted African American widow. Sheesh.
As for the tagline, there is a case for suing BVI over false advertising: "the greatest criminal minds of all time" these are not. They make the cast of Welcome to Collinwood look positively genius. Oy.
Still, it's not merely Ocean's Eleven, it's an episode in the lives of Ethan and Joel Coen. Hmmm...
M (Frequent coarse language, medium level violence)
104 minutes (1:44 hours)
Film: 19 August 2004
DVD retail: 12 January 2005
