Review – Hail, Caesar!

Having hit a new career high with 2013’s masterful musical dramedy Inside Llewyn Davis, The Coen Brother’s come back to the comedy genre with Hail, Caesar!, a very weird, and very dry comedy that only The Coen’s could make.

Hail, Caesar! takes a look at the day in the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a Hollywood fixer for Capital Pictures in the 1950’s, who cleans up any and all issues with big names and stars within the studio and industry.  When the studio’s biggest star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) goes missing, Mannix must get him back, along with a slew of other issues the studio throws at him.

Like most Coen Brother movies, the cast is great.  Josh Brolin is spectacular as Mannix.  Mannix has a swagger and intimidation to him that allows him to know everyone and get anywhere.  Brolin’s mix of Southern charm and gangster menace is perfect for the role.  Clooney, a Coen favorite, plays the dimwitted Whitlock wonderfully.  Ralph Fiennes, Channing Tatum, and Scarlett Johansson are welcomed newcomers to the Coen arsenal.  And Alden Ehrenreich as a good ol’ boy known for starring in Westerns and not serious dramas, is scene stealer and responsible for some of the biggest laughs in the film.

Hail, Caesar! reminded my a lot of my favorite Coen Brother film, The Big Lebowski (1998) in terms of tone and bizarreness.  Baird Whitlock getting kidnapped is more used as a plot device, rather the actual plot.  There are so many other characters and things going on in this movie, we sometimes forget about Whitlock’s kidnapping.  At its core, Hail, Caesar! is really a character study of Mannix and how he handles his life.  And, like most Coen films, there is religious subtext in its character and throughout the movie.  Mannix is savior.  A man who sacrifices himself and time with his family for what he feels is right, yet goes unnoticed and unrecognized by his peers.  This parallels nicely with the film as Capital Pictures is shooting a religious epic where one of the characters sacrifices himself for the good of others.

Is Hail, Caesar! a Coen Brother classic like Fargo (1996) or No Country for Old Men (2007)?  Not quite.  But, this is still a wildly entertaining and funny homage to 1950’s Hollywood cinema.  Like every Coen Brother movie, it is impeccably made, entertaining, and features some great performances.  It is always refreshing to see a movie of this caliber come out in the dreaded month of February.

MY RATING – 3/4

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