Hail, Caesar! was released to a lackluster response, but I hope that like many of the Coens brothers’ previous films it will eventually earn a well-deserved reappraisal. This is vintage Coens – a homage to studio Hollywood that is hilarious, brilliant, fun, and inventive. At the very least, there are several scenes fit for the brothers’ Best Of reel: an outstanding, playful musical set piece starring a tap-dancing Channing Tatum; a production meeting for a cheesy biblical epic denigrating into petty bickering between religious leaders; an effete director (Ralph Fiennes) repeatedly critiquing an untalented actor’s awkward line reading with increasingly unrestrained ferocity. The plot follows the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of a biblical epic whose star has been kidnapped by a group of Communist-sympathetic, leftist screenwriters. The Coens employ a lot of biblical symbolism and, like many other of their movies, Hail, Caesar! gives the impression of being an astute allegory without quite letting you grasp what exactly the allegory is (the studio is the dying Roman Empire, right? Josh Brolin is the upper-level Roman powerbroker played in the meta-film by Clooney? Is Clooney’s kidnapped character Jesus???). The leftist writers are like McCarthy’s worst nightmare, academic Marxists who (hilariously) actually really do conspire with communists on a submarine off the California coast. There are plenty of great comic beats, and the stars are spectacular, particularly Tatum, Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, and Tilda Swinton.
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