Fargo (1996)

Sometimes, you dig a hole so deep, your only choice is to keep digging.  Jerry Lundegaard has found himself in just such a hole.  He’s in deep enough that he’s decided to contract Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud to kidnap his wife.  They’re not the brightest, but they know enough to ask why Jerry wants half the ransom money back.  They also want to know why they aren’t getting cash up front.  You see, it’s Jerry’s father-in-law, Wade Gustafson, that has the money.  Jerry can provide the two with a car, as Jerry manages a car lot.  If they want the money, they have to get it from Wade with Jerry acting as the intermediary.

As you might expect, things don’t go according to plan.  Gaear shoots three people while transporting the wife, getting the police involved.  Wade also wants to deliver the money, which would cut Jerry out of his half, not that Carl would mind.  Carl wants to keep the whole thing for himself.  This could complicate things, as Jerry has upped the ransom to a million dollars.  Oh, and the police chief is investigating and she’s very good at her job.  (She has an uncanny ability to piece things together.)

Oh, and if that’s not enough, Jerry has GMAC on his back.  He somehow wrote up $320,000 in loans for cars that don’t exist.  It amazes me that he was even able to get away with this, considering we‘re talking 1987 dollars.  That would be close to $900,000 in modern money.  For that matter, I’m not sure why Jerry had such a lowball ransom amount.  Why not go for a million in the first place?  That would have been more than enough to pay back GMAC, unless the plan was to delay indefinitely or to skip town later.  (GMAC keeps demanding serial numbers, which Jerry is unable to provide.)

It seemed like it was a prefect crime.  All the kidnappers had to do was sit on the wife until the ransom came through.  This is, however, a movie about three screwups.  We don’t even learn why Jerry had to have that kind of money.  I’m assuming that he didn’t take it all at once, but still, where did it all go?  He also had to know someone would eventually ask about it.  You’d think the head salesman at a car dealership would either know better or be able to falsify the paperwork a little better.

As for the kidnappers, they tend to be an odd couple.  One is talkative while the other is quiet.  One tries bribery and quick talking while the other would seem to prefer a scorched-earth approach.  Neither one is that bright about it.  I know that Jerry probably can’t afford much on the $40,000 he’s paying, but you’d think he’d try for a little better.  There’s one scene where Carl is burying something in the snow.  He looks around and realizes that there’s no way to really identify the location later.  This scene for me typifies the movie.  No one really seems to think too far ahead.

I’m not a big fan of downward spirals, mostly because movies that use this theme tend to overdo it.  Here, it’s more subtle.  Jerry does come off as somewhat sympathetic in that any of us could find ourselves in a similar situation.  Maybe not that exact situation, but we can empathize with Jerry’s desperation.  We can see his frustration in thinking that he’s losing control that he never really had.

Some of the things were too subtle even for me.  As I said, I’m not sure what was going on in Jerry’s life that got him to that point.  (I’m sure someone will leave a comment with a good explanation.)  Jerry had proposed a land deal to Wade.  I’m not sure if was a real land deal or a way of getting money from his rich father-in-law.  I’m also not sure how Wade hadn’t found out about the GMAC scam.  You’d think someone would have contacted the owner of the dealership at some point.

It does present itself as a solid story, though.  None of the characters are so over the top that they were distracting or unbelievable.  There is violence, and it‘s not entirely subtle.  (One person was shot in the back at a distance.)  There is sex and nudity, but not a lot.  This isn’t a movie meant for small children.  It’s a dark comedy.  There are also things that I think would be too subtle for children, just as there are things about the movie that would be too much.

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The Ladykillers (2004)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

WARNING:  I will be giving away major plot points, including the ending.

Sometimes, I have to wonder if it could really be that easy. Tom Hanks plays Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, Ph.D. He's a man with a plan to rob a riverboat casino. He has a way with words, which one does not often encounter. He assembles a crew to help him with his robbery, but he first has to actually get to the money. That's where Marva Munson comes in. She's a 60-something widow with a room to let. She hates "hippity-hop" music and is always complaining to the sheriff about the neighbor playing it or some other nuisance.

She also has a basement that seems to be missing a wall, which presents Dorr with the access that he needs to get to the money. He rents the room and sets up the ruse. He calls in his team, telling Munson that they are a band of musicians. They 'practice' in the basement, so as not to 'disturb' Mrs. Munson.

Garth Pancake, played by J. K. Simmons, is a munitions expert and is responsible for digging the tunnel. (Fans of Law & Order will recognize Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda.) Pancake seems to know his stuff. Sure, he blows off a finger, but he gets to the money. I should also mention that he has Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which causes him to have to use the men's room at an inopportune time. (This is a real condition, which is hyped up a little for the movie.)

There's also Gawain MacSam, played by Marlon Wayans. He's the inside guy. He's necessary not only for the layout and workings of the casino and office, but to help cover their tracks later on. MacSam seems to have a tendency to get smacked around.

Lump is a football player who's used for brute force. They have to get rid of the debris from the tunnel by carrying it out and throwing it onto a garbage scow. Lump is very helpful in that respect.

The General, a chain smoker, rounds out the group. I believe his area of contributions are planning and discipline. He's very stern when anyone wants to change the plan or back out of something. His smoking also gets him in trouble with Mrs. Munson, who has a strict no-smoking policy.

The plan to steal the money is to dig a tunnel to the office, which is underground, and steal the money from the safe. They'll then take the money back to the basement and collapse the tunnel. MacSam will seal up the wall in the office's safe room, so that the money looks like it simply vanished. The five members of the crew will split up the money and go their separate ways.

There are just a few small problems along the way. The only major problem is that Mrs. Munson figures out that something's up when she sees the money. Dorr says that it's Pancake's money from a mortgage, but Munson doesn't buy it. Dorr eventually tells her what's going on and tries to convince her not to say anything, but she decides against. She gives Dorr and his crew two options: Either return the money and then to go to church with her or go to jail. Dorr and crew agree that neither option is acceptable and decide to kill her. They try, but in the end, all five of them end up dead and, ironically, Mrs. Munson gets to keep the money, which she donates to her favorite university.

The acting was good. There were a few problems that I had with the plot. First off, I hate it when a plan like this goes off well enough that the criminals carry out the crime, but they don't get the money for reasons other than being caught. They almost got away; all they had to do was leave town. Killing Mrs. Munson was just a way to rid themselves of witnesses and shouldn't have been that difficult for five grown men to do. It was a great plot carried out by five people that will never get to enjoy their ill-gotten games.

Also, they blow up the tunnel they used to steal the money, but there's no indication of any after effects. From what I could tell, there were only three stories to the house: Upstairs, downstairs, and the basement. The downstairs level was at street level, which meant that the roof of the tunnel couldn't have been more than a few feet from the actual street. The crew should have had to worry about the tunnel caving in while they were working. They should have also had to worry about the finishing explosion collapsing the ground and houses above it.

One final point: The crew is talking in a restaurant; it's amazing that no one overhears them and decides to tip off the authorities. Dorr was worried about the sheriff finding him at several points in the movie. This isn't a major point; I'm sure it happens all the time. As I've said before, comedies can get away with a bit more. The movie is usually just a method of delivering jokes, of which there were plenty. (The Waffle Hut scene is great.)

The only problem with the acting was Tom Hanks, who I though put too much into the role. If you've seen the commercials, you've seen what I'm talking about. He comes across as very goofy and bizarre. It really stands out. I don't feel that it detracted from the movie that much, though.

I give the movie four stars. 

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Hail, Caesar! (2016)

It seems like there’s always some major celebrity event going on.  There are divorces, arrests, tyrades, feuds and all manner of other things to fill the magazines and tabloids.  This isn’t to say that all of it is true, but there is the ever present celebrity gossip/news.   Growing up, I asked my mother why it seemed like stars from her childhood didn’t seem to have any scandals.  Did celebrities not have affairs when she was my age?  Did they simply not make it into the history books?  The truth was that studios had people like Eddie Mannix.

Eddie Mannix is head of physical production for Capitol Studios.  He deals primarily with damage control.  The movie is set in 1951 and Capitol is making a movie called Hail, Caesar of all things.  Hail, Caesar stars Baird Whitlock, played by George Clooney.  Whitlock isn’t that bright.  He can act alright, but he manages to get himself kidnapped very easily by a group of Communists calling themselves The Future.

When Whitlock wakes up, he starts to hang out with The Future not realizing that they’re asking for $100,000 in ransom.  Mannix not only has to deal with the ransom demand, but he has to contend with competing gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker.  (It doesn’t help that they’re twins.)  Add to this a pregnant actress who doesn’t seem to be in any rush to marry the father.  His solution is to have her put the child into foster care so that she can adopt the child without public finding out she‘s the mother.  Oh, and there’s the Western star, Hobie Doyle, who’s forced by the studio to star in a period piece.   Doyle has no business being in a period piece and everyone knows it, but it’s what the studio wants.  This makes an offer from Lockheed very appealing, as he’d be done with all of the stress.

I was able to watch the movie on a flight back to Miami a few weeks ago.  I kind of wish that my parents had watched it, as well, because I suspect that a lot of the context is lost on me.  Apparently, there was an actual Eddie Mannix who worked for MGM.  It appears that the similarities are tenuous, but most of the characters do seem to have real-life counterparts.  The real Mannix did try to cover up a pregnancy of an actual star.  Many of the problems that he had to deal with actually did happen to someone, at least on a superficial level.

A good deal of the context was lost on me, as I grew up in the 1980s.  This isn’t to say the movie can’t be enjoyed by younger audiences.  It’s just that I don’t think Westerns have ever been really big in my lifetime, at least in the sense that they were big for my parents when they were growing up.  There are many one-off scenes that mirror actual scenes in movies or pay tribute to a particular style of film.  I don’t think there are any similar styles in production today.

I wish I had someone to discuss this with, particularly someone who knows more about that era.  I don’t know how much was lost on me, exactly, or how it would have affected watching the movie had I known more.  The movie was still entertaining to me.  It was fun watching Josh Brolin and George Clooney play their respective roles.  I also caught a few cameos from actors like Jonah Hill and Robert Picardo.  (I know.  I can’t help but point out Trek actors in non-Trek roles.)    The fact that it was set in 1951 didn’t bother me at all.  I do wonder, though, what the present day will look like in movies sixty years from now.

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