Hail, Caesar! Review

Nightmare or Dream Factory?

♦ Tripwire sent editor-in-chief Joel Meadows with his best Hollywood smile to review The Coen Brothers’ latest comedy drama Hail, Caesar! Spoiler warning

Hail, Caesar!

Director: Joel Coen

Stars: Josh Brolin, George Clooeny, Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, Ralph Fiennes, Alden Ehrenreich

Three years have passed since the stolid, immersive noir of Inside Llewyn Davis, and yet again the Coen Brothers, seemingly eager to confound the critics who say that they have run out of steam, have diametrically switched genres. Hail, Caesar! is a period comedy drama that sees them return to an era that they have mined before, the Golden Age of Hollywood. But the last time they did so was with Barton Fink, which was twenty-five years and many projects ago. Hail, Caesar!, set in the 1950s, is a markedly different film to that, the only common ground between them being that both try to probe the dark, mercenary heart of Tinseltown. It is all too apparent that this film is a far lighter, more frivolous affair than Fink – if anything, it is an affectionate love letter to the movies that drew the Coens into the medium, and which continued to retain a sizeable influence on them.

Josh Brolin, who has now become a semi-regular fixture in Coen projects, plays likeable fixer Eddie Mannix, attached to Capitol Studios, the same outfit which Barton Fink slaved for back in 1991. His remit is to make everything run smoothly at the studio, and despite the fact that he is offered a less stressful job at nascent aircraft manufacturers Lockheed, the movie world exercises an iron grip on him, making it impossible to leave. The film weaves a series of disparate sub-plots together to try and illustrate the conflicting problems that Mannix has to control on a daily basis: we have the disappearance of star ham Baird Whitlock (Clooney), who has vanished in the middle of making the hysterically over-the-top Jesus biopic Hail, Caesar! (hence the film’s name), Esther Williams analogue DeaAnna Moran’s (Johansson) desperate efforts to hide her impending pregnancy, which could spell disaster for her career, and cheesy cowboy star Hobie Doyle’s (Ehrenreich) dilemma of being forced by the studio to appear in middlebrow director Lawrence Laurentz’s drawing-room drama, a role he is patently unsuited to. Fiennes plays the pompous Lawrentz with tongue planted very firmly in cheek.

The pivotal plot point is when Mannix discovers that Whitlock has been kidnapped by people with somewhat radical attitudes, with Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) thrown into the mix as an undercover agent for the Soviets.

Hail, Caesar! is a film that is eminently watchable, but does ultimately collapse under the weight of its own ambition. There are too many narrative threads jostling for position here, making the film feel cluttered and lightweight. Naturally the Coens’ eye for pastiche hasn’t deserted them, as their recreations of some of the more kitsch Hollywood productions are brilliantly conceived, while the scenes we witness from Whitlock’s tawdry Roman film are knowingly amusing. Hail, Caesar! is a nostalgic portrait of Hollywood in its 1950s pomp, and although a lot of it doesn’t quite work, there is enough here to satisfy even the most ardent Coen Brothers follower. Brolin is reliably committed, while Clooney shows off his celebrated aptitude for comedy. The rest of the cast are very solid indeed. Cameos here by the likes of Clancy Brown, who plays Gracchus in Whitlock’s film, and John Bluthal as left-leaning Professor Marcuse, are well-drawn and add an extra dimension to the movie. One of the funniest scenes in the film is where we see representatives of the four main faiths, including former Star Trek doctor Robert Picardo, (who plays a rabbi here), being called in to have lip service paid to them regarding the depiction of religion in Hail, Caesar! (The film within a film here). Only Tilda Swinton as twin gossip columnists Thora Thacker / Thessaly Thacker fails to bring anything to the table. The visuals, as you would expect, are exceptionally well-crafted, thanks to long-serving director of photography Roger Deakins, who imbues everything, especially the grandiose set-pieces, with a lushly stylised sheen.

With a career that spans over thirty years, Hail, Caesar!, while by no means perfect, proves that Joel and Ethan Coen can still effortlessly entertain and beguile, while bringing innovative ideas to the medium. One could say that they are the only filmmakers working within the mainstream who are unafraid of iconoclasm. Hollywood would be a far lesser place without them.

Hail, Caesar! www.tripwiremagazine.co.uk

JOEL MEADOWS

Hail, Caesar! is out now in UK cinemas.

If you can’t get enough of the Coens, check out Tripwire’s Nine Days of The Coen Brothers currently running elsewhere here where we review all of their movies up to Hail, Caesar!

Nine Days of The Coens Day One Part One

Nine Days of The Coens Day One Part Two

Nine Days Of The Coens Day Two

Nine Days of The Coens Day Three

Nine Days of The Coens Day Four

Nine Days of The Coens Day Five

Nine Days of The Coens Day Six Part One

Nine Days of The Coens Day Six Part Two

Nine Days of The Coens Day Six Part Three

The Coen Brothers Collection [DVD] The Coen Brothers Collection – Fargo/Raising Arizona/Miller’s Crossing [DVD] The Coen Brothers Collection – The Big Lebowski/The Hudsucker Proxy/Barton Fink/Blood Simple [DVD]