Film Review: RAISING ARIZONA, 1987

Tribute review as it’s Ethan Coen’s birthday today.

RAISING ARIZONA
Movie Reviews

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter
Review by Andrew Rowe

SYNOPSIS:

When a childless couple of an ex-con and an ex-cop decide to help themselves to one of another family’s quintupelets, their lives get more complicated than they anticipated.

REVIEW:

10 minutes, that’s how long Raising Arizona rolls until the title card hits. If this sounds odd it is, but so is everything else about the Coen Brothers’ second film. As they’ve often done throughout their career, the brothers normally follow-up a serious film with a comedy. Fargo led to The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men led to Burn After Reading. With Raising Arizona the brothers had just come from the neo-noir Blood Simple, their first ever film. Where as that film dealt with deception and murder in the shadows of…