The Ladykillers

The Ladykillers
Directed by	Ethan Coen Joel Coen
Produced by	Ethan Coen Joel Coen
Written by	Ethan Coen Joel Coen William Rose (1955 screenplay)
Starring	Tom Hanks Irma P. Hall Marlon Wayans J. K. Simmons Tzi Ma Ryan Hurst
Music by	T-Bone Burnett Carter Burwell
Cinematography	Roger Deakins
Editing by	Ethan Coen Joel Coen
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures
Release date(s)	March 26, 2004
Running time	104 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$35,000,000
Gross revenue	North America $39,799,191 Rest of the World $36,948,250 Worldwide $76,747,441

The Ladykillers is a 2004 remake of the 1955 Ealing comedy of the same name. The remake was by the Coen brothers and starred Tom Hanks. The film also co-starred J. K. Simmons, Marlon Wayans, Tzi Ma, Ryan Hurst and Irma P. Hall.

It is the first Coen film in which Ethan and Joel Coen share both producing and directing credit; previously Ethan had always been credited as producer and Joel as director. The film was originally to be directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, the Coens' former cinematographer. They were commissioned to write the script. When Sonnenfeld backed out, the Coens were eventually hired as directors, with Sonnenfeld retaining a producer credit.

Plot

In this adaptation of the original, the setting of the film is moved from London to Saucier, Mississippi, home of a riverboat casino. Actual filming, however, took place in Natchez, due to the real Saucier being situated in Harrison County and not bordering the Mississippi River.

In a quiet, beautiful community lives Mrs. Marva Munson, an elderly, God-fearing widow who answers the door one sunny morning to find the charming Professor Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr, a pretentious Southern dandy, darkening her doorstep. He explains who he is and expresses his interest in the room to let, which is Mrs. Munson's spare bedroom. He also explains that he is a musician and asks if it would be all right for him to use her basement as a place for recitals with his fellow "musicians". She accepts the terms and agrees. Mr. Dorr's fellow "musicians" are actually a gang of criminals, consisting of...

• Lump, the incredibly dumb but tough football player
• The General, a quiet tough-as-nails donut cook with expertise in tunneling and garroting troublesome individuals (it was implied that his expertise and rank were obtained in the Vietcong)
• Garth Pancake, a mustached animal trainer for TV commercials with expertise in explosives
• Gawain, their "inside man", a young janitor who works on the "Bandit Queen", a riverboat casino.

With all of their talents combined, the group of criminals plan to dig through the crumbling, dried earth that has piled up to form a tunnel in Mrs. Munson's basement and conclude that they will emerge in the vault of the casino. To avoid Mrs. Munson's hearing the digging, they play orchestral CDs (most notably a CD of Boccherini's Minuet (3rd movement) from String Quintet in E, Op. 13 No. 5 ) of as to seem that they are rehearsing, so she will not get suspicious. They dispose of all the unused dirt in Hefty trash bags.

After a series of comical mishaps that threaten to derail their plan, which include Gawain getting fired from the casino and Garth blowing his finger off in an accidental explosion (while demonstrating the 'safety' of C4 to the others), they break through the wall of the vault and snatch the loot, a scheme made even easier by Gawain, who has been rehired at the casino and is able to quickly repair the puncture in the wall. Mr. Pancake is able to rig a small explosion that will collapse the tunnel so it will never be discovered. The explosive seemingly turns out to be a dud, so Pancake ventures down the tunnel and, after examining it, inadvertently re-activates its timer. With about ten seconds before the tunnel collapses, Pancake crawls with all haste to escape, but his Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) starts to act up and this slows him down. It suddenly explodes and he is shot out of the collapsing tunnel and smashes into a table which has the money on it. Upon hearing the rumble, Mrs. Munson walks downstairs and finds out what her tenants have done. Outraged, she tells Dorr in a private conversation to either return the money to the casino and go to church to repent their sins, or else she will call the police. Dorr tells her he will consult the group. Not willing to give up the money, the gang decides to murder her and draw straws to do so.

Gawain loses, and must therefore shoot Mrs. Munson. When he goes to shoot her, he has a flashback of himself at ten years old, coming home with a spaniel puppy in his arms and asking his alcoholic, couch potato of a mother if he can keep it. She refuses and slaps him, claiming "you wait till your daddy gets home, he gonna lay into you proppa!". Upon hearing him murmuring "please momma, I love you. He won't shit in the house, I'll train 'im I promise and wipe his butt an' everything", Mrs. Munson (whom Gawain was visualizing as his mother) demands to know what he is doing with her pillow, and snatches it away. After receiving a slapping, Gawain informs his fellow comrades why he can't shoot her. An outraged Pancake tells him to accept his responsibilities and shoot her or face the prospect of being a coward, to which the group concurs. During an argument and brawl with Pancake, Gawain accidentally shoots himself in the chest and dies.

Lump and the General dangle the trash bag with Gawain's body over a bridge and drop it when a huge garbage barge heading out to the garbage island passes below them. Meanwhile, Pancake steals the money and attempts to escape with his girlfriend, Mountain Girl. However, Dorr is no fool, and checks to confirm the money is still present. Dorr sends The General chasing after them, who promptly kills them both with his patented strangling wire, and their bodies are then dumped on the barge.

This time, the General pulls the short straw and walks up to Munson's bedroom with his wire strangler, planning to strangle her in her sleep. He also back-flips his cigarette into his mouth so that the pungent fragrance of tobacco doesn't wake Mrs. Munson. As he is about to kill her, he is surprised by an alarm clock sounding and accidentally swallows his lit cigarette. He reaches for a glass of water on the nightstand to get a drink, only to realize this is where Mrs. Munson kept her denture. In disgust, he retreats the glass, and still choking, he staggers backwards into the stairwell and trips over the cat, and falls down the stairs, smashing his head against the wall and breaking his neck, killing him on impact.

When Dorr and Lump dispose of the General on the bridge, Lump suggests to Dorr that they give the money back to the casino. Dorr insists that he is stupid and tells him that he has to do the killing. Lump refuses and tries to shoot Dorr instead because he doesn't "want to harm a nice old lady". The gun doesn't fire, so Lump peeks down the barrel while pulling the trigger. It turns out that Dorr deliberately left one chamber empty, and he gets killed himself and falls onto the garbage barge passing under the bridge; timed perfectly due to Dorr's ability to anticipate Lump's every thought and move.

Dorr, left standing, discovers a raven sitting on a statue of death, which reminds him of Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven". Being a great admirer of Poe, he pauses to reflect. When the raven flies off, the head of the statue breaks and falls off, hitting Dorr on the head, causing him to fall off of the bridge. His cape catches on the bridge's underside railings, thus hanging him. His cape soon tears under his weight and he falls onto the barge.

Mrs. Munson wakes up, ignorant of last night's proceedings. She first inspects the crack in the wall where the General impacted, and then goes down to the basement to find that the gang has seemingly disappeared, leaving all the money behind. The police refuse to believe her story about the robbery, believing her to be lonely and possibly senile. They believe they are just playing along and humoring her, so they tell her to keep the money she found, and agree that she can give it to the "bible school" in the South Carolina, Bob Jones University. In the film's last moments, Pickles the cat is seen scurrying across the bridge and poking his head over the side with Pancake's finger in his mouth. He then drops it onto the passing garbage barge, disposing of the last remaining piece of the villains.

Characters

• G.H. Dorr, Ph. D (Tom Hanks) - The mastermind of the casino heist. He is the chatty Southern dandy who rents Mrs. Munson's apartment as a stage for the robbery. He claims to have gained his Ph.D. degree due to his knowledge of the ancient languages of Latin and Greek, and also claims to be a graduate of a Baccalaureate degree from the Sorbonne University in France. He also claims to be a professor of renaissance music at the University of Mississippi which he says is in Hattiesburg. However, in real life the University of Mississippi is in Oxford where there is a music professor named "George Dor". The University of Southern Mississippi, however, is located in Hattiesburg. He also frequently quotes the poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Dorr is very articulate, charming, and is somewhat pretentious. He is a recognizable parody of some of William Faulkner's characters and bears some resemblance to Manly Pointer in Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People".

• Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall) - A well-meaning, God-fearing elderly widow. She has a cat, Pickles, and loves gospel music. She also hates hip-hop or, as she calls it, "hippity-hop" music, highlighting "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" by A Tribe Called Quest as an example. She shares her name with the judge in the previous Coen Brothers film Intolerable Cruelty.

• "The General" (Tzi Ma) - The often silent owner of the Hi-Ho Donut store in the town. He is a smoker (which Munson scolds him for) and is skilled in tunneling. It is strongly implied that he gained his rank and experience tunneling for the Vietcong during the Vietnam War.

• Garth Pancake (J. K. Simmons) - A garrulous demolitions expert who suffers from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (which is comically portrayed in the film). He has a female partner, Mountain Girl, whom he met at an Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) weekend. In the movie, he is frequently bickering with Gawain.

• Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans) - The foul-mouthed, hotheaded janitor of the Bandit Queen Casino and the inside man. He bickers with Garth Pancake several times in the film. When he was ten years old, his mother slapped him several times for bringing a dog into the house.

• Lump Hudson (Ryan Hurst) - The brawn of the group and a former football player who "is not very intelligent". He seldom speaks, and he at first refers to Dorr as "Coach". However, Lump might be the only one with some semblance of a conscience.

• Mountain Girl (Diane Delano) - Garth Pancake's female partner and right hand gal. She wears braids and dresses in mountain clothing. Like Pancake, Mountain Girl also appears to be a fellow victim of Irritable Bowel Syndrome and met him at an IBS weekend.

• Sheriff Wyner (George Wallace) - The lazy sheriff of Saucier.

• Mr. Gudge (Stephen Root) - The intolerant but weak-willed manager of the Bandit Queen Casino.

Soundtrack

While Carter Burwell scored The Ladykillers, continuing his long-time collaboration with the Coen Brothers, the bulk of the soundtrack is devoted to African American gospel music, produced by T Bone Burnett, who had previously worked with the Coens in sourcing soundtrack music for The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

The soundtrack does not actually contain any pieces of Renaissance music. Similar to his work on O Brother, Burnett chose a mix of vintage songs by Blind Willie Johnson, The Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones and Bill Landford & The Landfordaires (the 1950s group sampled by Moby on "God's Gonna Cut You Down"), along with recordings of contemporary black gospel artists, including Donnie McClurkin, Rose Stone, Bill Maxwell and church choirs, made especially for the film soundtrack. Hip hop songs by Nappy Roots and Little Brother are also featured.

The soundtrack was praised for helping to set the tone of the film, distance it from the 1955 original and complement the contemporary Southern United States setting and gospel music atmosphere.^[1][2]

Track listing

1. "Come, Let Us Go Back to God" (The Soul Stirrers) – 2:50
2. "Trouble of This World (Coming Home)" (Nappy Roots) – 3:48
   • Featuring chorus by Rose Stone, Freddie Stone and Lisa Stone
3. "Let Your Light Shine on Me" (The Venice Four with Rose Stone and the Abbot Kinney Lighthouse Choir) – 6:43
4. "Another Day, Another Dollar" (Nappy Roots) – 3:48
5. "Jesus I'll Never Forget" (The Soul Stirrers) – 2:36
6. "Trouble in, Trouble Out" (Nappy Roots) – 4:04
7. "Trouble of This World" (Bill Landford & The Landfordaires) – 2:45
   • Not featured in film
8. "Come, Let Us Go Back to God" (Donnie McClurkin) – 4:33
9. "Weeping Mary" (Rosewell Sacred Harp Quartet) – 2:41
10. "Sinners" (Little Brother) – 4:25
11. "Troubled, Lord I'm Troubled" (Bill Landford & The Landfordaires) – 2:58
12. "You Can't Hurry God" (Donnie McClurkin) – 2:26
13. "Any Day Now" (The Soul Stirrers) – 2:28
14. "Trouble of This World" (Rose Stone and the Venice Four and the Abbot Kinney Lighthouse Choir) – 2:55
15. "A Christian's Plea" (Swan Silvertones) – 2:23
16. "Let Your Light Shine on Me" (Blind Willie Johnson) – 3:07
17. "Let the Light from the Lighthouse Shine on Me" (Rose Stone and the Venice Four and the Abbot Kinney Lighthouse Choir) – 1:42
18. "Yes" (The Abbot Kinney Lighthouse Choir featuring Kristle Murden) – 5:29

Credits

• Produced by T Bone Burnett
• Soundtrack executive producers: Joel and Ethan Coen
• Associate gospel music producer: Bill Maxwell
• Associate hip hop music producer: Keefus Ciancia^[3]

Other music in the film

• "Minuet" (3rd movement) from "String Quintet in E, Op. 13 No. 5", composed by Luigi Boccherini; which the gang pretends to play, echoing the original 1955 film.

Production notes

In the sequence where the gang begins to dump the corpses into the river to dispose of them, a garbage barge conveniently passes underneath each fallen robber as he falls from the bridge, replacing the goods train used in the original 1955 British film classic.

The gag of the portrait changing expressions is taken from Preston Sturges's film Sullivan's Travels. In an early adventure, Sullivan (Joel McCrea) escapes the advances of a sexually aggressive widow (Almira Sessions) by making a rope out of his bedsheet. The portrait of the late husband is duly shocked. In the original film, if you look closely at the pictures in the parlor, you will see a photograph of the captain at the salute. Two of the Coens' previous films, Intolerable Cruelty and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, were also heavily influenced by Preston Sturges.

Bruce Campbell makes a cameo appearance in the film, as in many Coen brother films, this time portraying a Humane Society worker.

References

External links

• Official website
• The Ladykillers at the Internet Movie Database
• The Ladykillers at Allmovie
• The Ladykillers at You Know, For Kids!