Fresh off of writing Spielberg's award-nominated Bridge of Spies, the Coen Brothers return with an ode to a long-past age of Hollywood that, while wildly entertaining, fails to build into a cohesive whole, and feels both narratively and thematically scattershot as a result.
Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a Hollywood producer at Capitol Pictures, a post-war film studio. When the star of their biggest production, Hail, Caesar!, is kidnapped, Mannix needs to figure out how to get him back. That's how the Coens' Hail, Caesar! was marketed, at least, but the film does not follow the conventional structure that implies, instead existing as a collection of plot threads which serve better as a series of entertaining scenarios than any cohesive whole. The film is more a collection of smaller truths than an expression of a greater one, as various plot threads touch upon different ideas which are connected to each other only tangentially through their connection to the film's characters and to the movie business in general. This is beneficial to the more exciting or humorous sequences, but the occasional dip into sobriety feels empty as a consequence. Moreover, the nature of some scenes creates a feeling that the film's various scattered ideas should amount to more than they actually do.
In its lighter moments, however, Hail, Caesar! is a delight. The Coens' dialogue is as spellbinding as ever, and their directorial touch brings with it perfect comedic timing. Whenever a plot thread really picks up, it's riveting to follow, and the narrative's various twists and turns are wholly unpredictable. And yet, some of the film's greatest joys-and greatest thematic cohesion-comes not from jokes or plot twists, but from its recreations of past movie magic. Full-fledged pastiches of post-war film genres exist both in-universe and out, most obviously existing in the films being made at Capitol Pictures but also creeping into the off-set action, most notably in a genuinely incredible sequence which resembles a noir film. If there's anything that the film is about as a whole, its a certain love for this historical period of the film industry even with all of its warts, a theme which comes across as largely navel-gazing yet not insufferable. The film flirts with critiques of the industry rather than fully explores them, but that's beside the point, as Hail, Caesar! is less about that and more about a time period and a state of mind, which it's not quite comprehensive or grandiose enough to fully capture.
The fragmented feel of the film is emphasized by the massive cast, featuring numerous actors who, in the most extreme cases, have only one on-screen appearance in the entire film. While Josh Brolin, George Clooney (as the star Baird Whitlock) and Alden Ehrenreich (as the actor Hobie Doyle) are constants throughout the film, many others such as Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, and Channing Tatum only appear in two or three scenes, and Jonah Hill, despite having his character discussed leading up to his appearance, is only on-screen for a fraction of a scene. There isn't a weak performance in the lot, and each uses their screentime effectively, but the extensive quantity of recognizable faces in smaller parts calls further attention to the disparate nature of the scenes.
In spite of the at times skit-like feel, though, a significant chunk of the film is thoroughly enjoyable. The Coen Brothers have crafted a film that, while not a comedic masterwork, is perfectly timed and boasts great, memorable dialogue, and in their evocation of films past, Hail, Caesar! begins to feel like something more significant. Unfortunately, in its lack of cohesion, the film ultimately fails to come together into a whole, and its various stabs at depth are ultimately unsuccessful in the absence of clearer themes to sustain them. Despite this, though, the film is wildly exciting in its unpredictability, well-crafted in every respect and, even if less than the sum of its parts, made up almost exclusively of fantastic parts. It's so often great in passing that it's disappointing that the film cannot be great as a whole... but hey, at least it's not a January movie.
72/100, or:
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