ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

g-78435 It's odd that This film has all the Coen elements, comedy and mystique, including soundtrack and stellar set design - all the usual values of a masterpiece... But this one feels vacuous here and there, perhaps because it's so close to being a period piece but isn't. And I cherish Coen period pieces.Hank's work is great here, great, as is Wayan's, but something is just off.. I really don't see Tom Hanks as a good fit to the Coen bullpen, nor Simmons really.Look, even a weaker Coen Bros. film is better than most other's strongest efforts. It's good for a re-make.

Python Hyena The Ladykillers (2004): Dir: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen / Cast: Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma: One of the best of the Coen Brothers, which proves that even they can create a masterful remake. It is a hilarious caper about a group of thieves who charm an elderly woman as gospel musicians while using her cellar as a base for their operation to tunnel to a casino. It contains the skill of Joel and Ethan Coen whose credits include such impressive films as Blood Simple and The Big Lebowski. Their film is a remake of the 1955 classic starring Alec Guinness but thankfully the Coens use style and witty writing to pull off one of the best remakes to come. Tom Hanks leads the heist sporting a funny accent and a charm that delights Irma P. Hall who allows them to shelter there. Marlon Wayans works as a janitor inside the casino and is the inside guy. J.K. Simmons plays an explosive expert who has a medical bowel condition. Tzi Ma plays a character called the General, and Ryan Hurst plays an unintelligent football player of few words. This is a great collaboration of actors playing thieves hindered by their victim's unconditional devotion to God. It shows the consequences of crime with a peculiar reference to God in that Hall is a Christian woman who believes that the wayward direction is headed right where the thieves dump the body bags. Score: 10 / 10

jimbo-53-186511 Professor G.H Dorr (Tom Hanks) responds to an advert where an old lady Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall) is advertising for a room to let at her home. However, he has an ulterior motive and intends to rob a casino located close to Marva's house. Dorr recruits a ensemble team to assist in the heist which will start in Marva's cellar. They use the pretence that they are a group of musicians and make Marva believe that they are practicing in her cellar. Although Marva is unsuspecting at first a serious of mishaps cause her to become more and more suspicious of this bunch of 'musicians'.Having not seen the original film, I'm going to have to just stick to reviewing this film and I must admit that I did find it very enjoyable on the whole. There were some minor issues I did have with this film; I didn't think it was particularly well paced; I felt the set-up was perhaps a little long given the fact that it has a relatively straight-forward plot, there were also odd occasions when the film seemed to have unnecessary deviations away from the main plot. The introduction of Mountain Girl also seemed rather pointless to me as her character added very little to the film. However, these were very minor problems and didn't cause too many problems whilst I was watching the film.The cast were all good here, but particular praise should go to Hanks & Hall; I've no idea what the original film was like, but the Coen's have given this a 'black comedy' feel to it and it works really well. Hanks enhances this effect by giving Dorr a creepy and weird feel to his character and at times he does give you that 'cringe' feel when watching him on screen - this is meant as a compliment and is a testament to both Hanks as an actor and the Coen's as writers. Hall is also very good here and manages to give her character a sort of naïve charm, but she's also quite ballsy and has no problem in keeping the men in line. Her comic timing & delivery was also fantastic. Tzi Ma doesn't speak much here, but he actually manages to be funny more for what he does than what he says but he does get some funny lines as well. Simmons & Wayans are both good for the most part and their constant squabbling and one upmanship was pretty funny to watch. On occasions, Wayans was close to crossing the line between being funny and being annoying, but I think he just about gets away with it here. Hurst for the most part is just the clichéd lumbersome jock although like Ma, the Coens do treat him to some good one liners.Like many Coen brothers film, the film is also excellent from a technical basis with editing, direction, score and cinematography all being superb.As mentioned, I haven't seen the original version of The Ladykillers, but I have to admit that I really enjoyed this Coen brothers remake. The characters are inherently quirky (as they are in most Coen brothers films). When it hits it is incredibly funny - it's very rare that I laugh out loud when watching any comedy, but this film achieved that result on a few occasions. The cast were all terrific with Hall & Hanks being notable standouts. Simply put this is a wonderful black comedy.

Adam Foidart "The Ladykillers" is a black comedy directed by the Cohen Brothers and featuring a terrific cast so it should have been money in the bank, but something must have gone wrong along the way because it's not particularly funny. The film is about a group of criminals who want to rob a casino by tunneling into the building's vault. To do this, their leader "Professor" Goldwaite Higgins Dorr (Tom Hanks) rents a room from an elderly widow named Mrs. Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall). Under the pretense of band practices several days a week, Dorr invites over his "friends" Lump (the muscle, played by Ryan Hurst), "The General" (a tunneling expert, play by Tzi Ma), Garth Pancake (J. K. Simmons as the demolitions expert) and Gawain (Marlon Wayans as the inside man) they spend the evening digging towards the tunnel. As the criminals get closer to their ill-earned goods, trouble arises not only because the widow grows suspicious, but from the group itself. In this case, there's little honor among thieves.It's difficult to pin-point why the film overall doesn't work, but a big part of it are the characters. Most, like "The General" and Lump are basically one-joke characters that get very little dialog. Even the others who get more scenes to clearly define their personality are mostly identifiable by their single joke. About halfway into the film we learn that Pancake has irritable bowel syndrome, so in pretty much every single scene we see him in from then on, he has to go to the bathroom. Even the mastermind Dorr feels more like long strings of articulate, elaborately-woven Southern Dandy-speak than an anti-hero you can follow with glee. None of these would be a problem if the movie was genuinely funny but isn't. I actually found it to be quite annoying. Most of the characters are so bumbling that I knew there was going to be one thing that would go catastrophically bad after another so I found it predictable in that way. I did find some genuine laughs here and there (like when Pancake makes an argument for worker's compensation) but that never counterbalanced the endless, irritating scenes where I had to listen to Tom Hanks and Marlon Wayans talking constantly. I had some real problems with the ending as well, which comes in so quickly it feels like an afterthought. The film doesn't feature any particularly inspired cinematography and the story is just OK. I wish there was more to say, but it's a comedy that's competently made, except for the fact that there's nothing about it that stands out and there aren't enough laughs to keep the film afloat.The most frustrating thing about "The Ladykillers" is that everything about it should have worked. We have a great cast, talented directors and a good premise, but it's probably the worst of the Coen Brother's films. It's not unwatchable and I can see some people actually liking it quite a bit but I can't really recommend it. (Full screen version DVD, January 26, 2014)