Reject false Coens, even if Clooney-shaped. Review by Brandon Wolfe Ever since O Brother, Where Art Thou? , George Clooney has been a staple of some of the Coen Brothers’ sillier offerings in the 21st Century. Clooney has also appeared in their iffy Intolerable Cruelty as well as in the much stronger Burn After Reading . He has fashioned such a close working relationship with the Coens that he has now been entrusted with directing a script they’ve written. But just because you’ve worked with the Coens don’t make you the Coens. The Coens wrote the script for Suburbicon in 1986, shortly after completing Blood Simple , yet never produced it, for whatever reason. But, upon seeing the finished product, it’s clearly of a piece with their oeuvre. The acidic black comedy, the comically boneheaded characters, the caper gone awry, the creatively gruesome deaths are all very familiar. Suburbicon , however, never gels the way that even the lesser Coen efforts do. Some key ingredient didn’t ...
