No, 'The Ladykillers' is not the Coen Brothers’ worst movie

It’s not quite among their classics, but there’s a lot to like about the Coens’ Southern-fried 2002 comedy

If there’s anything that denizens of Film Twitter love to do, it’s rank the movies of the Coen Brothers. And more often than not, the lowest-ranked film on those lists is The Ladykillers, the Coens’ crime comedy that came out in the spring of 2024 (20 years ago next week.) 

Now granted, I wouldn’t put The Ladykillers anywhere near the top or middle of my personal Coen rankings. Yes, it’s uneven, and from a character, plot, and structure standpoint, it doesn’t crackle anything like the brothers’ best movies do. 

But I’m not placing it at the bottom either; its immediate predecessor, Intolerable Cruelty, is much worse. (My personal top five goes Fargo, Inside Llewyn Davis, A Serious Man, Miller’s Crossing, and The Big Lebowski, but that’s forever changing.) The Ladykillers isn’t a masterpiece, but it is somewhat underrated.