[7.4/10] It would be too much to call *Hail, Caesar!* a deconstruction of Old Hollywood glamour. It would also be too much to call it a tribute to that 1950s studio sparkle either. Instead, it’s a love letter written with a poison pen -- a movie about movies that both admires and recoils from the mercenary work necessary to make these dream factories run, while remaining amusingly ambivalent about the ribbons of reveries they create.

It is also a Coen Bros. movie, so grand plots and convoluted ploys nearly reach their ridiculous fruition, only to fall apart at the last minute. Scads of self-possessed personalities veer between the absurd, the self-important, and the unvarnished sweet. And in uproarious stretches that provoke guffaws and slower situational silliness that wins wry smiles, it is damn funny.

The film tells the story of a star who’s kidnapped by Communists, a simple but earnest hayseed tapped to portray an effete sophisticate, a foul-tempered starlet whose pregnancy threatens to puncture her shining public image, and any number of other fires that the studio’s fixer must put out to keep the trains running on time. That fixer, Eddie Mannix, is the spine of the film, smoothly trudging his way from one crisis to the next, avoiding derailments with his pocket watch, gumption, and effortless understanding of whom to lean on, whom to sweet talk, and whom to slap around to keep it all moving.

But he has a chance to step off the track. Mannix carries an offer from Lockheed Martin in his back pocket, one that would give him more regular hours, an in at a more professional sort of business, and a much easier life than the 27-hours-straight he has to put in to hack it as head of physical production for a Hollywood film studio.

*Hail, Caesar!* is neither quixotic nor cynical about what entails. It makes no bones about the absurd strictures and control that studios exert over the lives of their employees. Mannix and his confederates cook up phony adoptions, cover indiscretions with political pressure, treat their dunderheaded or demanding stars more like ornery pets than people. It touches on pay for writers, laws evaded as though they’re barely there in the first place, and a workaday mundaneness that belies all the supposed magic.

And yet, the movie also pays homage to the styles and output of that age of the cinema. From a Gene Kelly-esque sailor-filled dance number, to a series of Cowboy songs and stunts, the movie lovingly recreates the tints and tropes of the old days. Monologue-laden historical epics sit next to comedies of manners. Starlets emerge from beneath artificial waves in the same fashion as Russian subs. Hitchcockian pursuits and suspenseful car rides give ways to Capra-esque crane shots and that California glow. For however much the Coen Bros. seem poised to poke fun at, or at least acknowledge, the grim realities of celluloid shimmer, they’re just as apt to deploy it to their own, tribuative ends.

Meanwhile, they mine the insanity of this all for all the comic gold they can find. (Hello, Mr. Pocket!) A group of religious figures debate the depiction of God in the studio’s latest movie, and cosmology in general, in a scene that just drips with the Coens’ dry sense of humor. Ralph Fiennes and Alden Ehrenreich nearly blow the roof off the place in a scene where the former’s cultured director tries to coach the latter’s dopey cowboy to deliver his line with a layer of performance beyond “aw, shucks.” Empty-headed actors compare the dialectics of socialism and direct action to having to shave Danny Kaye’s back. There’s a constant strain of sly absurdity, the loonies who populate this lot and this town, that the writer/directors channel throughout for both their quiet chuckles and big laughs.

The catch is that, given the expansive cast of characters and deliberately overstuffed set of stories and conflicts and conspiracies for a harried (but never ruffled) Mannix to have to resolve, the movie feels a little too loose and aimless at times. *Hail, Caesar!*, contrary to the flicks it both spoofs and valorizes, doesn’t have much momentum from scene to scene. Instead, the Coens and their team are content to jump around from character to character, crisis to crisis, and conversation to conversation like a buzzed clapper boy stumbling home. Each (or at least most) of the pieces they put together are fun to watch or interesting to mull, but they rarely amount to more than the sum of their admittedly well-constructed parts.

Still, in its best moments and sequences, the film’s charms and the talents of its creatives are hard to deny. The film low-key satirizes a familiar moment in so many films about making one type of art or another. After Mannix has whacked some sense into his big star, the leading man heads to the set and delivers one of those grand oratories that defined so many of that era’s iconic films. Playing a Roman soldier whose heart is moved, he gazes upon Christ crucified (skeptically noted as a principal, rather than an extra by a P.A.), and delivers his lines with conviction and passion (not ardor). The crew looks on in admiration; the music swells, and in the climax of the speech the orator...forgets his lines.

The director yells cut. The lead grouses about how close he was. His co-star gripes about their uncomfortable Roman costumes. And the train keeps rolling. This isn’t magic or alchemy. It’s a bunch of idiots and working stiffs hacking out pleasantries in celluloid for a paycheck or at the behest of even more mercenary forces beyond their control.

But *Hail, Caesar!* contrasts that faux, unavailing scene of the good soldier seeking his direction before a man of god with a real one. When Mannix asks his Priest for forgiveness in the confessional, he implicitly asks him whether to take the Lockheed job, with all its ease and destruction, or to stay at this tougher racket and keep corralling these nudniks by only slightly less morally-questionable means. He walks out of that confessional reassured, ready to keep helping make those features a hard-won reality, by any means at his disposal.

That’s the optimistic cynicism of *Hail, Caesar!*. The movie, and by extension the Coens, don’t seem to harbor any illusions about the pure artistry of the cinematic output. The message of the film is not that all of this tricks and juggling and extra-legal measures are not somehow worth it for the beauty committed to film. But the work itself, the labor it takes, to just be a part of that machine, is its own kind of beautiful.
Movie-making, especially in the studio days, could be a slog and a grind and even a grift, in a way that belied the glitz and glamour that Tinseltown projected to the world. The Coens make no bones about that, but with decades in the business, and their tough-running fixer, they clearly still think that work is worth more than even the biggest frame could hold.

"Hail, Caesar!" is yet another in a long line of very entertaining Coen Brothers films. This time, it's a funny tale of a Hollywood studio kept afloat by Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). Eddie is engaged in all sorts of chicanery, but he's grounded in morality and family. He is such a protector and so selfless. He's the kind of guy you want to be around and maybe even looking out for you.

I suppose there is a lot of truth to the bits about spoiled actors, deflected scandals, and hectic filming schedules, but that's stuff for those in the movie industry to chuckle over. What the Coen's do so well is weave in fun characters and precarious situations that even those of us in flyover country can appreciate. The conversations between characters is always great. It never tries to be overly clever and is almost always charming.

Their films always look fantastic and I appreciate their comedies more than anything else they do. It's so refreshing to be able to laugh at something other than poop and dick jokes.

The subject matter covered here isn't as interesting to me as most of their other films, but it still teeters on the brink of insanity (or reality).

There’s a scene halfway through the film when Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), a Western B-movie star, is cast in a fancy melodrama helmed by Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes). Doyle is hopelessly out of his element, hobbling about in his new suit–the switch was the studio’s idea in an effort to broaden Doyle’s appeal, much to Laurentz’s dismay. It’s not long before the two engage in a back-and-forth, Laurentz trying to get Doyle to pronounce “Would that it ‘twere so simple”, and Doyle trying desperately to appease Laurentz. After a lengthy exchange, both are left exacerbated. Much later in the film, we catch a glimpse of the final version, where Doyle and Laurentz compromise with a much simpler: “It’s…complicated.”

Complicated is exactly what’s at the heart of this situation. Laurentz’s increasing frustration with this obvious miscast and Doyle’s confusion may serve to fuel the slapstick comedy on exhibit, yet this scene alludes to so much more. It’s the inner mechanics of Hollywood, where directors are mere technicians and actors are props, all to be assigned and managed. It’s the clashing of proud classical Hollywood traditions of entertainment and escapism with the dreaded rise of message films and sophisticated art. It’s the contradictory nature of unfettered creativity with capitalism and consumerism, where compromise–and perhaps communism–seems to be the only way out.

This is just one slice of the screwball nature that is the Coen Brothers’ latest comedy, Hail, Caesar! There’s also a kidnapped Roman soldier, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney at his dimmest and greatest), a handsome sailor (Channing Tatum) and a beautiful mermaid (Scarlett Johansson). All opportunities–that the Coens gladly take–to simultaneously demonstrate the power and influence of cinema, while mocking its sense of self-importance.

Each scene is allowed to play out, Channing Tatum and his homoerotic musical number or Scarlett Johansson’s hypnotizing aquatic acrobatics. It’s not only an homage films of the Golden Era, but a demonstration of the mechanics that make film such an appealing medium. The Coen Brothers have a firm grasp on the allure behind each piece, using the acting, staging and costumes to propel Hail, Caesar! forward. It’s a simple concept–use filmmaking techniques to advance a theme and narrative, but by prioritizing these lengthy sequences over traditional narrative pacing or dialogue, the Coen Brothers give room for these fundamental concepts to breathe and thrive.

It’s all threaded together through Josh Brolin’s character, Eddie Mannix, studio fixer. And there’s a lot that needs fixing: a pregnant star, a discontent director, communism, threat from the future–the usual. It’s a packed schedule, and the film follows suit with a similarly hectic pacing. An array of symbols, innuendos and subversions are thrown at the viewer: Capital Studios butting with Das Kapital, Mannix being offered a role at Lockheed where they tout a more stable industry– weapon-making, or Whitlock staring at the audience as he addresses God. It borders on bombastic, but there’s just too much wit, and heart, here to discredit any of the ideas presented–fleshed out or not.

Hail, Caesar! doesn’t break new ground in the increasingly crowded sub-genre of Hollywood-on-Hollywood, but it hits a Goldilocks concoction between inside baseball cynicism and endearing love letter. Though all these antics, the Coen Brothers argue, quite convincingly, that everything in film matters, while also making a case for the futility and hollowness of anything produced on the grounds of Hollywood. So is this a nihilistic shrug at our attempt at defining and contextualizing or a fierce exhibition of the inherent power of Hollywood where life imitates art? Well, as Doyle would try to tell you, “Would that it ‘twere so simple.”

I am a fan of the Cohen Brothers, but I will not lay laurels at the feet of a movie simply because it bears their name. _Hail, Caesar!_ is not one of their better efforts.

Unrelated: I also wonder why they felt it necessary to hide the fact that they were making a faith-based film in the trailers.

_Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._

**Once upon a time the king Julius Caesar was kidnapped!**

So here's the new film from the Coen brothers. They have become rare in the recent years, I was always checking out what's next for them and now I'm slightly disappointed with this. I enjoyed watching it, it is one of those you want to rate them better, but you can't for some unidentified reasons. According to my analysis why I was not satisfied fully is the story. I mean the narration was rich, performances were phenomenal and music, locations, all were fantastic, but the screenplay was kind of aimless. The beginning, the ending or even in the mid part it had no purpose, but something like a mockumentary about the film industry of the 1950s.

With the average screenplay, the directors have shown their magic. Very cool presentation, you would enjoy it if you're theirs films fan. But I don't think all his fans would be pleased enough. This is truly a multi-starrer film, everybody was at their best in their retro characters. If you share your experience with others who also saw it, they might ask who do you liked the most. Probably many would favour Josh Brolin, because he had more priority than others who comes under his belt. But George Clooney and Alden Ehrenreich also have given a good show followed by Scarlett Johansso and Tilda Swinton. The remaining ones as well not bad, but Jonah Hill was completely a waste.

Since it is about the film industry and its people, brace yourself for some good laughs. There is variety in it like different genre/theme and multiple layers in the narration. Like from moving to the western to the historical subject and then to the musical and many more. It did good at the box office against its budget, only because of the star power it has and the filmmaker's reputation came in handy. Though I hope the Coen brothers would come back strong with another product and it does not take another 3 years. It is not an award winning film, just a good entertainer, but praisable quality.

_6/10_