O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema" ©Copyright 2000 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.

A weak offering from the Coen brothers will usually still be head and shoulders above most other films, a point proven with O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Compared to any of the Coen's previous films, O Brother just doesn't measure up. But since the brothers have consistently made some of the best films over the last decade and a half, even something that doesn't seem up to their usual standards can tower over its competition.

O Brother, which is loosely based on Homer's `The Odyssey,' in set in 1937 Mississippi, where a rock-breaking chain gang appears on the screen after the nifty silent movie title cards used for the film's opening credits. Three of the convicts (apparently the only three white prisoners there) escape through a giant cornfield and are quickly involved in two very funny sight gags because of their still-shackled feet.

The fast-talking leader of the group is Everett Ulysses McGill (George Clooney, The Perfect Storm), who orchestrated the jailbreak because only four days remain before his `treasure' will be underwater. The treasure in question is from an armored car robbery McGill pulled off some years earlier, while the "underwater" comment remains somewhat of a mystery. In addition to the treasure, McGill also has some pretty serious issues with his hair, which he constantly slicks back with Dapper Dan's Pomade.

McGill's two sidekicks are Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro, Cradle Will Rock) and Delmar O'Donnel (Tim Blake Nelson, The Thin Red Line), two animated dimwits who specialize in hysterical slack-jawed expressions. The three men begin the trek to McGill's home, but first they come upon a strange black man speaking in riddles that foreshadow what the escaped cons are going to encounter over the next four days.

And, oh, the things they encounter. They rob a bank with the manically sensitive `Babyface' Nelson (Michael Badalucco, The Practice), interrupt a Ku Klux Klan rally, run into a slightly deranged bible salesman (John Goodman, Normal, Ohio), cross paths with three lovely sirens, and even cut a hit record at a radio station owned by a blind man (Stephen Root, Bicentennial Man). And the coppers are on their tail the entire journey.

O Brother is full of all kinds of great ‘30s slang and mannerisms, plus some wonderful Southern accents. The music is first-rate, too, with most being penned by T-Bone Burnett (he was part of Bob Dylan's `Rolling Thunder Review') and Chris Thomas King, who appears in the film as a blues musician at a familiar crossroads after a certain appointment (his name is Johnson – Tommy, not Robert). And Roger Deakins' (Thirteen Days) lush photography is spellbinding, giving every scene in O Brother a golden glow that could translate to a golden night at next year's Oscar ceremony.

The negatives of O Brother are pretty minor. At times, it seems like the Coens (The Big Lebowski) just stuck a bunch of random ideas together, using bits that they couldn't squeeze into their previous films. From the color of the leaves and the dead corn stalks that make up the backgrounds of nearly every scene, it should be autumn, but a newspaper tells us it's the middle of July. The film also wags its tongue at P.E.T.A., showing some pretty bad stuff happening to animals for comedic value.

Surprisingly, O Brother is practically a musical, offering more than a couple of nicely orchestrated song and dance numbers. Also somewhat shocking is the strong performance from Clooney, who seems totally wrong for a role like this, but does an exceedingly good job. Turturro and the relatively unknown Nelson (he directs an upcoming version of Othello' – called O) deliver great performances, too. An interesting note: Turturro supplied the voice of Badalucco's dog when he played David Berkowitz in Summer of Sam.

1:46 – PG-13 for adult language, violence and some bad animal cruelty