The Coen brothers' first-ever "unoriginal" work: a remake of a mid-Fifties British caper comedy by the underappreciated Alexander Mackendrick. In mitigation, the brothers throughout their careers have been so partial to the pastiche -- the neo-noir Blood Simple, the imitation-Hammett Miller's Crossing, the imitation-Cain The Man Who Wasn't There, the alternately Capra-esque and Hawksian screwball comedies, The Hudsucker Proxy and Intolerable Cruelty -- that an actual remake constitutes only a subtle difference in degree. Then, too, their shared interests with the Ealing Studios original -- an interest in the unravelling criminal scheme and an interest in human stupidity -- renders the Coens' appropriation of the material into an act of tribute rather than of plunder. With The Big Lebowski and Fargo in particular, they have earned their rights to The Ladykillers. Finally, they have effected so many changes -- in milieu, in plot, in character, and in language -- as to reclaim a measure of originality. They have much fun, as has Tom Hanks, with the high-flown diction (periodically brought low by the self-conscious adolescent snigger) of the criminal mastermind who styles himself an Old Southern gentleman and scholar: "portal," "redoubtable," "ignoble," "derring-do," "cogitation," "contretemps," etc., etc., not to mention his impromptu recitations from Poe's poetry. And J.K. Simmons, the best thing in Spider-Man, made by Coen crony Sam Raimi, is the best thing here as well, a bald-pated, handlebar-mustached ordnance specialist, a former Freedom Rider, and a lifelong irritable-bowel sufferer, with a small grab-bag of blustery catch phrases: "Easiest thing in the world" and "Child's play" when confidently on the offensive, or "Just a trial balloon" when in apologetic retreat. Still, there is no getting around our awareness that this, however well done, is a job of renovation rather than invention. And no getting around our legitimate reasons for disappointment, however slight. With Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, Tzi Ma, Ryan Hurst. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd