The Coen brothers built a movie around a kidnapping and then made the kidnapping the least interesting thing in it. Hail, Caesar! follows Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), head of production at Capitol Pictures in 1951 Hollywood, as he covers up scandals, dodges twin gossip columnists and tries to find the star of his studio’s biblical epic before the cameras roll again. The plot is a mystery. The movie is not really about the mystery. It is about the job of holding a studio together, and that turns out to be enough.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Eddie Mannix and the Lockheed Offer
Mannix is the studio fixer, which means he is the man who makes problems go away. His problem in Hail, Caesar! is Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the talented but dim-witted star of the studio’s newest major production, Hail, Caesar! A Tale of the Christ. Whitlock is drugged and abducted in the middle of filming. He wakes up at a meeting of “The Future,” a group of blacklisted Communist screenwriters, and is easily won over to their cause.
The Future send a ransom note demanding $100,000 for Baird’s return. Mannix procures the money from the studio. That is the spine of the film, and it is a thin one. The Coens, who wrote, produced, edited and directed, are less interested in whether Mannix gets the money back than in what the job costs him.
All the while, Mannix weighs a generous job offer from the Lockheed Corporation. That offer is the film’s real question. Mannix can leave the business of covering up for scandalous stars and take a respectable job. He does not, and the movie is honest about why: he is good at this, and being good at something is its own trap.
DeeAnna Moran and Joseph Silverman
The kidnapping is not the only mess on Mannix’s desk. Unmarried synchronized swimmer-turned-actress DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) becomes pregnant. Mannix arranges for DeeAnna to place her baby in foster care and then discreetly adopt it, preserving her career.
Mannix and DeeAnna meet with surety agent Joseph Silverman (Jonah Hill), a trusted scapegoat for the studio, who agrees to foster DeeAnna’s child. This is the film’s best-running joke about how the studio system worked: every scandal has a procedure, and every procedure has a man willing to put his name on it. Silverman’s dependability is the punchline, and Hill plays it straight, which is the right call.
Hobie Doyle Cannot Say the Line
The funniest thread in Hail, Caesar! belongs to Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), a singing Western film star who has been hopelessly miscast in a sophisticated comedy of manners. Director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) cannot get a usable line out of him. Hobie cannot overcome his thick Western American accent.
When Laurentz requests Hobie’s removal, Mannix convinces him to continue his coaching. Ehrenreich and Fiennes play the scene as a negotiation between two men who are both right. Hobie admits to Mannix his unease about the role. Mannix reassures him and confides in him about Baird’s kidnapping.
That exchange is where Hail, Caesar! stops being a comedy about Hollywood and starts being a movie about loyalty inside a machine. Hobie is the only person Mannix tells the truth to, and he tells him because Hobie is too decent to use it.
Thora, Thessaly and the Premiere
Tilda Swinton plays twin gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker, who circle Mannix for a story. He convinces Thora to withhold a story in exchange for information on Hobie. The arrangement is the movie’s cleanest illustration of how the fixer’s power actually works: not force, not money, but access traded for silence.
That evening, Hobie attends the premiere of his latest Western with starlet Carlotta Valdez (Veronica Osorio), as arranged by Mannix. The pair are accosted by the Thacker sisters. Hobie spots the briefcase of ransom money, carried by musical star Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum). The premiere becomes the film’s hinge, and the Coens stage it as a crowded set piece where the studio’s publicity machine and its criminal errand run through the same room.
A Running Order for a 106-Minute Film
| Stage | What happens | Who carries it |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | Mannix works the studio floor | Josh Brolin |
| Disappearance | Whitlock is drugged and abducted | George Clooney |
| The Future | Ransom note demands $100,000 | Blacklisted screenwriters |
| DeeAnna | Pregnancy cover-up and adoption plan | Scarlett Johansson, Jonah Hill |
| Hobie | Miscasting and coaching | Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes |
| Premiere | Briefcase spotted | Channing Tatum, Veronica Osorio |
| Close | Mannix decides on Lockheed | Josh Brolin |
The film runs 106 minutes. It premiered at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles on February 1, 2016, and Universal Pictures released it theatrically on February 5.
What the Coens Are Actually Doing
The Coens first talked about Hail, Caesar! in 2004. The original idea was set in the 1920s and followed actors performing a play about ancient Rome. They shelved it until late 2013, then moved it to the 1950s and built it around a studio fixer. Principal photography began in November 2014 in Los Angeles.
That history shows. Hail, Caesar! feels like a movie the Coens kept in a drawer and returned to when they figured out what it was for. The 1950s setting gives them a real industry to press on: blacklisted writers, contract stars, gossip columnists with two faces and a fixer who answers to all of them. The kidnapping plot is the excuse. The studio is the subject.
The cast is deep in a way that matters. Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Channing Tatum all appear. Michael Gambon narrates. McDormand plays C. C. Calhoun, a film editor with a scarf and a job to do. Clooney plays Whitlock as a man with no interior life worth reporting, which is the joke and also the tragedy.
The film grossed $63 million worldwide on a $22 million budget. The National Board of Review named it one of the top ten films of 2016. It picked up Production Design nominations at the 89th Academy Awards and the 70th British Academy Film Awards. Those nominations are the right ones. Hail, Caesar! looks like a studio backlot should look, and the production design is doing more storytelling than a lot of the dialogue.
The Verdict on Hail, Caesar!
Hail, Caesar! is a good film with a structural problem it never solves. The kidnapping is the engine, and the engine is the weakest part. The Future are a joke the Coens enjoy more than the audience does, and Whitlock’s conversion to their cause is a gag that runs one beat too long. When the movie cuts back to the ransom plot, it loses the tension it built elsewhere.
What works is the texture. Mannix’s day is a series of small compromises, and Brolin plays him as a man who has stopped noticing he is making them. The DeeAnna Moran thread is the sharpest writing in the film because it is the least sentimental about what the studio did to women. The Hobie Doyle thread is the funniest because it is about craft: a director who cannot reach an actor, and an actor who cannot hear what is being asked of him.
The Lockheed offer is the part worth watching. Mannix has a way out, and the film does not pretend the choice is easy. It also does not pretend he is a hero. He is a man who is good at cleaning up other people’s messes, and the movie knows that is not the same as being good.
Hail, Caesar! is not top-tier Coen. It is a mid-tier Coen with a top-tier cast and a production design nomination it earned. The mystery is forgettable. The fixer is not.
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