One of the most exciting things about Hail, Caesar!is the reunion of the Coen brothers with Josh Brolin, the rare actor who innately understands the filmmakers uniquesense of humor. Brolins performance in the Best Picture-winning No Country for Old Men was perfectly in tune with the droll and despairing thriller the siblings built around him, and it seemed like only a matter of time before they decided to use him again. The Coens were so excited to re-team with Brolin, they cast him in a wonderful short film almost immediately after wrapping their first featuretogether.
The perfect appetizer for Hail, Caesar!, World Cinema (2007) is a three-minute treasure commissioned as part of an anthology project in honor of the Cannes Film Festivals60th anniversary.Brolin stars as a cowboy named Dan who wanders into an art house theater in search of a good matinee. Hoping to get a better sense of his options, Dan strikes up a conversation with the ticket-taker (actor and Argo producer Grant Heslov) about whether he should see Nuri Bilge Ceylans Climates, or Jean Renoirs 1939 masterpiece, The Rules of the Game. Dan doesnt seem to be much of a cinephile he refers to subtitles as them words up there to help you follow along but theres something beautiful to his sincere curiosity and how it transforms the box office into an intimately personal experience.
The whole thing probably took all of an hour or two to get right, but its a wonderful way to kill a few minutes. Theres a hell of a lot of truth in it, as Dan might say.
Hail, Caesar!opens in theaters on February 5th.