The Ladykillers Details

In the delightful 1955 black comedy from Ealing Studios, 77-year-old Katie Johnson upstaged the likes of Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers and won a best actress Bafta for her role as the widow who innocently lets rooms to a motley gang of criminals. Now the Coen brothers (with Ethan gaining his first credit as co-director) have audaciously transplanted this premise from a dank north London suburb to the Deep South bible belt. A bearded Tom Hanks takes on the Guinness part of criminal mastermind, with Irma P Hall playing Marva Munson, an anti-smoking Baptist who's not averse to face-slapping when she hears bad language. Hanks performs admirably as the eccentric Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr III, whose every utterance reeks of pompous southern verbosity. But the siblings' renowned quirkiness somehow seems at odds with the original offbeat masterpiece. With their previous outing Intolerable Cruelty also adapted from someone else's work, let's hope the Coens make a swift return to producing movies from their own imagination.

Flat remake of a classic comedy relocated to the American South, with an less engaging cast and broader jokes. Irma P. Hall is excellent as the landlady, though her toughness makes less enetertaining the contest between her and the incompetent robbers.