Ladykillers

Year: 2004 Rating: R Overall Evaluation: 8.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 9.0 / 10 10.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 4.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

The R rating is for language and there is plenty of it from a few of the characters. Way over the top and unnecessary - we get it, OK? Other than that it was fine.

Story

The story is not super exciting but it moves along fast enough to keep from getting bored. Basically some crooks get together and try to tunnel into a casino's money vault from the house of an elderly, old-school-black-gospel-Christian lady.

[SPOILER WARNING]

She eventually catches them and offers them a chance to repent. Instead they each try to kill her, one by one, each dying for his efforts. In the end she comes into possession of the stolen money and gives it all to Bob Jones University (a Christian college in the south).

This 1955 remake is shot in the same quirky style of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and has a lot of its sensibilities (see below). It's a good story overall.

Suppositions

Other than Tom Hanks bizarre 19th century throwback character the rest of the movie is pretty much accurate, even when it is poking fun at some caricatures.

Significance

The story shows that crime doesn't pay (well, sort of), and that evil begets evil. The hero is intellectually backward, and the villain something of an academic genius - yet each is morally opposite. The hero is a Christian and morally straight as an arrow while the villain ends up being the most vile character of the movie. The hero wins with no moral shortcomings (to her knowledge) and the villain gets what he has coming.