‎Hail, Caesar! (2016) directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Hail, Caesar!

2016 Directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Lights. Camera. Abduction.

Tells the comedic tale of Eddie Mannix, a fixer who worked for the Hollywood studios in the 1950s. The story finds him at work when a star mysteriously disappears in the middle of filming.

Josh Brolin George Clooney Alden Ehrenreich Ralph Fiennes Scarlett Johansson Tilda Swinton Channing Tatum Frances McDormand Jonah Hill Veronica Osorio Heather Goldenhersh Alison Pill Max Baker Fisher Stevens Patrick Fischler Tom Musgrave David Krumholtz Greg Baldwin Patrick Carroll Fred Melamed John Bluthal Alex Karpovsky Armazd Stepanian Allan Havey Robert Pike Daniel Robert Picardo Ian Blackman Geoffrey Cantor Christopher Lambert Show All…

106 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 12

What is Hail, Caesar!? What isn’t Hail, Caesar!? It’s a comedy, a noir, a historical epic, a musical (of two different varieties), and a melodrama. It’s a movie about the glory days of the industry that churns them out, and how the system so often resembled 1,000 spinning plates wobbling in perfect harmony for a split second. It’s a film about faith, and the pivotal role that it plays in one man’s search for meaning amidst the chaos of existence. It’s a tale of the Christ, told by two Jews who wouldn’t trust Jesus to save a cat out of a tree, let alone someone’s mortal soul. That is to say: It’s a Coen brothers movie, and one of their…
Review by Evan ★★★½ 13

There was a point in time when I didn't like Channing Tatum; what a fucking idiot I was.

The film is very entertaining, but its kind of all over the place. There's A LOT of great scenes, but the movie itself didn't completely come together for me. Definitely enjoyed it overall though.

Like a good chunk of the Coen Brothers' filmography; this is definitely one I'm going to have to watch more than once to fully appreciate it. Heck, I didn't care much for The Big Lebowski after my first watch and now I've seen it 10+ times. That film is my Bible.
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 8

92/100

"Would that it were so simple.”

Hail, Caesar! begins with the image of a crucifix as a solemn hymn silently sings within a quiet church, establishing an earnest degree of gravity in a surrounding world of profound, bewildering zaniness. It is in this opening image, soon dissolving into a close-up of Christ’s universal display of sacrifice, where we meet the Coens; not as filmmakers, but as autobiographers. That’s not to say that Hail, Caesar! is strictly about any specific experience, but it feels mined from within, a slapstick-y scream of annoyance and frustration that continuously trails back, wounded but energized, to the swelling love of cinema.

Much can be stated about the film’s pure aesthetic pleasures, evoking the classicism…
Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½ 6

49/100

[original one-sheet]

Not the Coens' worst (though it's close), but easily their laziest. Structurally, it's a disaster, continually and arbitrarily switching back and forth between puckish character study (of a surprisingly bland character) and goofy ensemble piece—it's as if (a blander) Llewyn Davis had wandered into Burn After Reading, which would do neither Llewyn nor BAR's clockwork plotting any favors. More than that, though, Hail, Caesar! plays like 21st-century Woody Allen, which is to say that it feels like they wrote exactly one draft and then immediately shot it. (Casting tons of recognizable faces in forgettable bit parts—did they really need Alex Karpovsky to walk around a room snapping photos?—heightens the resemblance.) So many potentially terrific ideas never amount…
Review by Lucy ★★★½ 2

"would that it twuuuuuuh so simple"
Review by josh lewis ★★★★ 6

DIVINE PRESENCE TO BE SHOT

the coen's oeuvre is a varied one chalk full of different genres, ideas, characters etc, sometimes light & wacky, other times heavy & serious but there is a constant -- the coen's love to tell stories about individuals pointlessly (but endearingly) fighting the stupid, chaotic, contradictory systems that, for whatever reason, control human life. whether it be the existential grasping of A Serious Man or Barton Fink, or the straight-up moronic confusion of Burn After Reading ("all bureaucracy, no mission"), the coen's never fail to argue for the little guy's individualism in systems that see no value in them. they're just as humanistic as they are nihilistic. and in this regard Hail, Caesar is the coen brothers…

Recent reviews

Review by Pepespray

C+
Review by bigdiscofan ★★★

it was really good but i pretty much only liked it when channing tatum sang
Review by P-Man ★★★★

George Clooney with finger sandwiches intently listening to communists who kidnapped him. Channing Tatum dancing and his tiny little dog. I love this movie more than I should. Especially when you consider how much I dislike the Josh Brolin and his arc (the idea is perfect on paper but I do not like the way it's executed). And while I love Tilda Swinton and her turn in Burn After Reading I found her characters annoying in this. Also random but I feel like the whole movie is summed up by one line:

"Would that it were so simple."
Review by moffheister ★★★

I think I get what this film was trying to do? Josh Brolin as morally conflicted enforcer of capitalistic cultural norms? Or something? I enjoyed it, quite a bit in places, and there were plenty of little Coen-y touches I found hilarious, like the randomly creepy photographer at the Communist meeting.

In all, while it looks great (wonderful heightened period design and Roger Deakins, bringing it as always), the whole is a bit muddled. Would that it were so simple...
Review by Adrián Torres ★★★½

Scavenger Hunt #46
13. something with ROCKS

It's obviously good, the cast is great, specially Ehrenreich and Johansson, the production design is great, the choreography is awesome, actually the scenes of the filmmaking process were the best part.
But I'm thinking maybe I don't like the Coen brothers that much.
Review by AgentLeonard ★★★½

Enjoyable, felt like the pilot to a Hollywood TV show.
Review by benjamin_hahn ★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Coen Brothers didn't get a lot of praise for this one, but I thought it was pretty funny. Channing Tatum's tap dance number was hilarious. The scenes with George Clooney and the communists were thought provoking too. Reminded me a little of Trumbo and the video game L.A. Noir.
Review by chattphotos ★★★

HC was alright in the middle but it falls flat in the end with just too many ideas to tie up.

The trailer made it look like a movie about goofy and funny moments in making movies with a side of action as the Roman centurion is kidnapped.

What it was like, 1950’s life, communist infiltration, oh look a love fling, competing reporter sisters (could have really played that up throughout with all sorts of one-liners throughout the story) and an anti-climactic finish to make it really bland at the end.
Review by Eddie Sánchez ★★★

Hail, Caesar! is a lot of very smart ideas told haphazardly. The tone was an odd misfire for the Coens, never exactly able to reconcile all the genres they want to pay tribute to while still maintaining a consistent sensibility that is fully digestible to a contemporary audience. The editing feels like the most visibly arbitrary thing I’ve ever seen from them thus far (except for the scene in the actual editing room, appropriately), hurting the already dangerously loose nature of their narrative. I understand that Clooney seems to have painted the Coens into a corner, basically forcing them into writing the screenplay after publicly stating this was a film they were working on and, yeah, you can totally tell how few drafts this went through. Still, I could watch Channing Tatum give us his best Gene Kelly, or ScarJo’s gorgeous Busby Berkeley routine any day of the week. Bonus points for the sound design and post-war political humor!