When one waits too long to write a review, one finds that it isn’t the easiest of things to do, especially when the movie was not particularly earth-shattering. Which is certainly the case with this one. This is a marked shift from what one typically expects from the Coen brothers. It is an exuberant embrace of Golden-Age Hollywood, gliding smoothly through various classic genres over a day in the life of a harried studio executive. There’s Channing Tatum, doing his best Gene Kelly impression as a lonely sailor in a beautifully choreographed dance number. Then there’s Scarlett Johansson, in a bathing-beauty extravaganza number. And then there’s George Clooney as the star of a period film, a sword-and-sandal epic that’s meant to be the studio’s year-end prestige picture. The whole thing is called: “Hail, Caesar: A Tale of the Christ.” Ralph Fiennes is the fastidious director. And finally, there’s Jonah Hill in a small but intriguing role as a lawyer.
This is all a very roundabout way of saying that the individual films within the film work beautifully. It’s the tying them all together that didn’t work out too well. Josh Brolin stars as a studio fixer who makes his daily confession of nothing terribly earth-shattering to a vaguely annoyed priest. And as is often the case in the Coen brothers’ films, religion comes into significant play, not only in Brolin’s Catholicism but also in the film-within-the-film, “Hail, Caesar!”, and in the notion that movies provide something to believe in — a sense of guidance and hope. And finally, from what I can remember, the conclusion — which is decidedly abrupt and unsatisfying — is intended to serve as a contrast to the neatly packaged Hollywood endings that mark the made-up movies in “Hail, Caesar!”
Overall, a somewhat underwhelming and often perplexing set of action sequences that gets all-too confusing at times. But still, a brilliant cast of actors who make you want to sit up and pay attention.
