Tom Hanks stars in The Ladykillers

Academy Award winner Tom Hanks returns to his comedic roots and teams up for the first time with Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou?) for his first laugh-out-loud comedy in more than a decade. The Touchstone Picture is retelling the critically acclaimed 1955 comedy, The Ladykillers.

Hanks stars as Goldthwait Higginson Door, Ph.D., a charlatan professor who's assembled a gang of so-called "experts" for the heist of the century. The thieves: experts in explosions, tunneling, muscle, and the critical "inside man." The base of operation: the root cellar of an unsuspecting, church-going little old lady named Mrs. Munson (Irma P. Hall). The ruse: the five thieves need a place to practice their church music. The problem: it quickly becomes evident that Door's thieves lack the mental capacity to do the job. The bigger problem: they have all seriously underestimated their upstairs host.

When Mrs. Munson stumbles onto their plot and threatens to notify the authorities, the felonious five decide to do her in. After all, how hard can it be to knock off one old lady?

The Ladykillers is written for the screen and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen. Ethan & Joel Coen, Tom Jacobson, Barry Snowfield, and Barry Josephson produce the film.

The Ladykillers may kill you," says two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks, who teams up with Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel Coen & Ethan Coen for their hilarious new comedy, The Ladykillers. "Everybody out there is looking for an unpredictable film. This should be it."

"We're very lucky to have Tom Hanks in this film," notes Joel Cone. The filmmaker brothers' latest comedy is the story of the heist of the century that goes bust when the thieves get more than they bargained for from their old lady landlord. "It occurred to us that Tom, who is someone we've wanted to work with in the past, but not really knowing in what capacity, would be really interesting in this part. The fact that he hasn't made a comedy in a while made it even more special for us."

"I'm not quite sure how we knew that Tom would be just right for the part -- Dorr is very different than anything he's done in the past," says Ethan Coen. "But as it turned out, I think we were right. His comic timing is perfect, He's as funny as he's ever been."

It also helped that the part is a good one - with shades of the role made famous by Alec Guinness. The 1955 version of The Ladykillers starred Guinness as the mastermind (of sorts) whose caper plot goes bust when the unwitting old lady from whom they rent a room catches on. "Doing 'The Ladykillers' is like interpreting 'Richard III,'" says Hanks

Hanks' co-star is Chicago actress Irma P. Hall who is recovering from a serious accident she encountered recently. She appears as the little old lady who rents the room to the culprits.

Though Mrs. Munson may seem at times a very innocent and sweet little lady, she's no pushover. "She's the rock that they all beat their heads against futilely, explains Ethan. "She knows what's right and she's never given to doubt or self-doubt or any kind of doubt."

After auditioning for Joel and Ethan before the movie went into production, Irma "was sure that she didn't get the part." I only read a couple of lines and after that we started talking," recalls Hall about the audition process. "And I said to myself, they don't even want to hear me read. I can forget this."

"We did torture Irma a little bit, unfairly," admits Joel. "In fact she was the first person we saw for the part and she was so good and so impressive but we thought, are we going to cast the first person we see? So we went through the ridiculous exercise of seeing lots of people. But Irma had the part from the beginning even through she didn't know it and we didn't realize it.

"We were really lucky with Irma," concludes Ethan about her strengths as an actress. "She sort of goes toe to toe with Tom and beats him over the head. Kind of like Ruth Buzzi with her purse, in a figurative way."

Irma, like her co-star Tom Hanks, responded immediately to the screenplay. "it's so well-written," she concurs. "The humor comes out of real people. Each character is so well defined and you care about them -- you care what happens to them. And it's an American story. You really get the sense of that. It's rooted somewhere."

"We've done lots of punches and hitting and fight scenes in movies, but Irma hauled off and walloped Marlon for real," says Joel. "To Marlon's credit, there are very few actors who a) would sit still for that, and b) on take 2, wouldn't flinch, anticipating that they might be walloped again."

"At one point, she hit me, and she slapped the character out of me," laughs Wayans. "I was knee deep in my character and was thinking, "Hey, Irma? Can we talk about this? We're friends, right?'"

"The really amusing thing was after the whole thing was over," recalls Joel, "Irma went up to Ethan and was bragging about the fact that she'd been trained in stage combat."

"It was news to Marlon," quips Ethan.

She brought out some historical facts about her concepts saying, "When I was teaching school, I taught a lot of mischievous little boys. That's my character's attitude toward the professor and his friends -- they're just mischievous little boys."

Article copyright Sengstacke Enterprises, Inc.