Easily one of the best Coen Brothers movies
“Raising Arizona” is a comedy classic effectively suited to the Coen Brothers; something that is both oddball yet purely creative in the style it chooses to tell its story.It also shows the true charisma of Nicholas Cage. He’s HI, a career robber who wants to change his ways once marrying his policewoman wife, Edwina (Holly Hunter). Unfortunately she cannot have children which sets him on a journey of kidnapping a child from a big furniture magnate and questioning his own abilities as a husband and father. Though it’s another questionable southern accent from Cage, what appeals about HI is the quest for stability even when sense or luck is not a strong suit. HI is lost; essentially a good man looking to build that middle class life but with few prospects to actually do it. His past doesn't help either and in the cleverest bit in the film, a literal metaphor (Randall “Tex” Cobb) inches ever closer to rob him of all the hope he has left. Coen Brothers staple John Goodman, and William Forsythe, play two of HI’s goober friends who “released ourselves on our own recognizance” from prison and are equally as funny as they are the antithesis of everything HI needs to be at the moment. For her part, Hunter comes off just crazy enough to want to be involved with Cage, just achingly maternal enough to want to go through all the risk involved here, but also be the stern voice of reason. The Coens best balancing act is managing to make fun of these hayseeds while keeping them identifiable and it’s the material about trying to go straight and taking responsibility that lead to the cleverest jokes (an extended scene just buying diapers is thrilling and improbably funny) and most heart. There are lulls here and there but an impressively exciting finale, excellently photographed by cinematographer, and future director himself, Barry Sonnenfeld, and moving closing narration perfectly encapsulating the American dream, are enough to make “Raising Arizona” a far smarter film than it initially got credit for being.
**I usually do short, spoiler-free current reviews but with the pandemic, i’m doing a nostalgia series on 1987 in film, part of a larger review/ranking series on the 80’s.
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