Watched: Raising Arizona
Observations:
- This is not the Coen brothers’ masterpiece.
- The tone felt a little off in this one. There was still the same characteristic Coens weirdness - the funny spikes that usually provide welcome relief to the disturbing small-town dramas they usually write - but instead of that drama, there was a stab at comedy, filled with slapstick and over-the-top characterisation and bad accents. (Yes, Fargo had bad accents too, but they felt a little more contained; here, they’re all over the place.)
- There was something about the fact that Holly Hunter has one of those faces you can’t help but care about - when you see her crying, even if the music in the background is stripped-down bluegrass, you’re laid low. There were too many moments in this where I felt like I was supposed to be laughing, but wasn’t.
- That said, there were good moments. The bank robbery with John Goodman and William Forsythe was fantastic; the tension during the kidnapping was perfectly executed; Nathan Arizona’s speech at the end is delivered perfectly by Trey Wilson.
- There was a film that came out last year called Gambit - it was adapted (poorly) from a screenplay that the Coen brothers wrote, and it felt like someone trying desperately to write a Coens-ish script and having limited success. This had the same air, despite the fact that it’s definitely their film.
- Not a wasted 90 minutes, but I’m not sure what to make of it all.