When the Joel and Ethan Coen combine crime and comedy, some of our favorite moments in recent cinematic history have been born. Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Burn After Reading are utter delights that weave hilariously charming, yet slightly unsavory, characters with the Coens’ trademark wit, and instant classics are unleashed to the world. With their latest, Hail, Caesar!, they try to do it again.
Hail, Caesar! is being sold as an ensemble piece, with an all-star cast painted on a canvas of comedy that centers on a studio executive/fixer (Josh Brolin’s Eddie Mannix) trying to balance a slew of balls in the air on several different productions on his movie lot. When the biggest movie star in the world, George Clooney’s Baird Whitlock) is kidnapped by a couple of extras and taken to a home full of communist screenwriters, it throws a bit of a damper on Mannix’s day.
He’s got a water-music epic anchored by the beloved DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), a western and a high-brow drama (both featuring a star in Hobie Doyble (Alden Ehrenrich) — who all at the studio believe is the next big thing, and a song and dance World War II swinging set, anchored by a Gene Kelly-esque Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum).
If you go into the film expecting what the Hail, Caesar! trailer is selling, you will be disappointed. It is not that film. It is an ensemble picture in billing, but in truth, the headline should be that this is Brolin’s film.
This is a day in the life of Mannix, a man at a crossroads between taking a different road away from this cinematic circus and into a life of comfort — both financial and with his stress-level. Yet, he kind of likes the madcap world of the movie studio in 1951. It’s the studio system and he’s the top dog and damn it, he’s good at it too. Which road will he choose is the crux of the plot of Hail, Caesar! and in that way, it’s a bit more of a dramatic introspective piece than full-out crime comedy.
Brolin is masterful as the sun whose light all the other plot planets circle. He shows yet again why the actor is on such a roll of late. Brolin commands his characters and as such commands the attention, the compassion and the interest of the audience.
Hail, Caesar! is still fascinating, utterly entertaining, hilarious (some of the Coens most insanely funny scenes are in this film) and is an all-out love letter to a bygone era of filmmaking that the movie-making siblings wholeheartedly adore and have embodied their whole career. We’ve seen elements of this in many of their other films. There are tributes to classic directors and iconic movie moments throughout their career. Hail, Caesar! is their chance to put them many in one film.
Much of it works… as parts. But not quite as a whole, but perhaps, that was the intention of the auteurs all along.
Any scene involving Tilda Swinton’s characters, feuding twin sister gossip columnists (“don’t call me a gossip columnist!”), is nothing short of comedy gold. Ehrenrich is sensational and if anyone is second fiddle to the headlining story of Mannix, it’s his Doyle. This is a guy that Hollywood used to love (and still does?). He is well known for one thing, in this case, a rope twirling, gun-shooting cowboy from America’s The Middle. Yet, they try to milk more from his fame than it possibly deserves. He’s placed in a high brow film with Ralph Fiennes’ Brit, Laurence Laurentz. The twangy Doyle has more than a few altercations with his new director’s last (and first) name. That is only the beginning of their troubles (check out this single scene Hail, Caesar! teaser and prepare for more hilarity).
Swinton, Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Johansson, and Tatum are in but a few scenes. A few scenes does not an ensemble make. We suspect that this was a case of the Coens calling and asking them to take on small roles. Who says no to a chance to be part of the Coen’s universe? Just because the studio has all these stars in one film, doesn’t mean it should sell it as each is top-billed player in a story that is truly about one man and his day only.
That’s not taking away from the film itself. After days to digest the film itself, and to separate it from what was expected heading into the theater, an appreciation for what we did get in Hail, Caesar! has emerged. It is what it is… a series of vignettes tied together by a central character who is so appealing that we would walk miles in his shoes on any day of any given week in 1951’s Hollywood.
Grade: B