Dark comedy an original

LOS ANGELES -- Some filmmakers tiptoe around the word "remake." Others delicately suggest their film is not so much a remake as a "revisitation or reimagining," afraid of being scorned for filching someone else's ideas. The Coen brothers guffaw over such euphemistic distinctions.\n"Listen, this is a remake," said Joel Coen, who joined with brother Ethan to write, produce and direct "The Ladykillers," starring Tom Hanks in an update of the 1955 Alec Guinness black comedy.\nLeave it to the Coens to call it a remake while infusing it with so much of their own warped humor and macabrely funny imagery that it feels entirely original. After last fall's nearly normal "Intolerable Cruelty," the George Clooney/Catherine Zeta-Jones romance that was the Coens' most mainstream film yet, the brothers are back in their hinterland of oddball America, where such wicked little yarns as "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "Barton Fink" could only exist.\nIn "The Ladykillers," Hanks takes on the Guinness role as mastermind of a gang of daft thieves who rent rooms from a sweet old lady as a base of operations then bumble through attempts to knock her off when she uncovers their plan. The project began as a script the Coens wrote at the request of director Barry Sonnenfeld, the cinematographer on their first three films, "Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona" and "Miller's Crossing." After the screenplay was finished, Sonnenfeld moved on to other directing projects, so the Coens decided to make the film themselves.\nThey had no qualms about doing a remake, which Hollywood is churning out by the dozens these days.\n"We don't think about it in those terms," Ethan Coen said. "We wouldn't have done it if we didn't think we could have fun with it."\nThey had not seen "The Ladykillers" in years, though they borrowed one of its memorable closing lines of "Who looks stupid now?" for their 1984 debut, "Blood Simple."\nThe Coens took the "bones of the plot" and ran with it, transplanting "The Ladykillers" from London to the Deep South and creating a more active heroine than the porcelain-teacup widow of the original. Irma P. Hall co-stars as a slightly batty, devout Southern Baptist who discovers her dandy of a tenant (Hanks) and his buddies (Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma and Ryan Hurst) have tunneled from her cellar into a casino and cleaned out its cash vault.\nThe film puts an absurdist spin on reality as only the Coens can. They create a timeless realm where hip-hop punks co-exist with old Southern charlatans of the Mark Twain Duke-and-Dauphin variety. Sinister lines from Edgar Allan Poe manifest themselves in images of ravens and crumbly gargoyles, while an endless flotilla of garbage barges underscores the atmosphere of dewy decay the Coens present.\nPropelling the action is an invigorating collection of church tunes gathered by music producer T Bone Burnett, a soundtrack that could rouse interest in gospel the way Burnett's work on the Coens' "O Brother, Where Are Thou?" did for roots music. Hanks delivers a wildly eccentric performance as a caped, toothy "professor" with a rat-quiver laugh, a passion for dusty literature and a heart of ice (the Coens viewed Hanks' character as a cross between Col. Sanders and 19th century actor Edwin Booth). Like Guinness in the original, Hanks creates an effeminately creepy heavy, but in an entirely different manner and without the slightest trace of imitation.