Special to The Democrat

&uot;The Ladykillers&uot; is a new comedy from Oscar-winning filmmakers Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (&uot;O Brother, Where Art Thou?&uot;, &uot;Fargo&uot;).

The movie stars Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks (&uot;Catch Me If You Can&uot;) and veteran actress Irma P. Hall (&uot;Beloved,&uot; &uot;Nothing to Lose&uot;).

The film also stars Marlon Wayans (&uot;Scary Movie,&uot; &uot;Requiem for a Dream&uot;), J.K. Simmons (&uot;Spiderman&uot;), Tzi Ma (&uot;The Quiet American&uot;) and Ryan Hurst (&uot;Remember the Titans&uot;).

A Buena Vista Pictures release, the film &045; a retelling of an award-winning 1955 British comedy &045; is directed by Joel Coen from a screenplay he wrote with Ethan Coen. Tom Jacobson, Barry Sonnenfeld and Ethan Coen are producing the film.

&uot;The Ladykillers&uot; is the story of an eccentric Southern professor, G.H. Dorr III (Hanks) who assembled a band of less-than-competent thieves to rob the Bandit Queen, a Mississippi riverboat casino.

As a base of operations, he rents a room from an unsuspecting, straight-laced, church-going old lady, Mrs. Munson (Hall) and introduces his gang as a musical ensemble in need of practice space.

Dorr’s quintet includes casino &uot;inside man&uot; Gawain (Wayans), demolitions expert Garth Pancake (Simmons), tunnel expert The General (Ma) and brute force expert Lump (Hurst).

When Mrs. Munson discovers their tunnel to the casino vault in he cellar and threatens to notify the authorities, someone has to stop her.

Through a series of misadventures, Dorr’s henchmen find they are no match for her and, one by one, prove to be more dangerous to themselves than to her.

The Coen brothers’ other films include &uot;The Man Who Wasn’t There,&uot; &uot;Raising Arizona,&uot; &uot;The Big Lebowski,&uot; &uot;Miller’s Crossing,&uot; &uot;The Hudsucker Proxy,&uot; &uot;Barton Fink&uot; and &uot;Blood Simple.&uot;

Their next release is &uot;Intolerable Cruelty,&uot; which stars George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones and is scheduled for release Oct. 10.