Raising Arizona

Directed by Joel Coen, Raising Arizona follows Nicolas Cage’s Hi and Holly Hunter’s Ed as they successfully kidnap a child to raise as their own – with complications ensuing after a whole host of oddball figures arrive on the scene (including Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb’s bounty hunter and John Goodman and William Forsythe’s escaped convicts). Filmmaker Coen, working from a script written with Ethan Coen, kicks Raising Arizona off with an enormously entertaining (and flat-0ut breathtaking) prologue that effectively lays the groundwork for the lunacy to follow, and it’s apparent, certainly, that the movie’s tremendously affable atmosphere is heightened by the efforts of a perfectly-cast roster of performers – with, especially, Cage and Hunter stepping into the shoes of their goofy (yet thoroughly sympathetic) figures with an ease that generally proves hypnotic. There’s little doubt, however, that Raising Arizona does suffer from a somewhat erratically-paced midsection that contains a small handful of ill-conceived elements (eg everything involving Cobb’s post-apocalyptic figure), and yet the picture, buoyed by Barry Sonnenfeld’s consistently eye-popping cinematography, nevertheless builds towards a truly satisfying third act that’s capped off with an impressively (and unexpectedly) moving finale – which does, in the end, confirm the movie’s place as a solid early effort from the Coen brothers.

*** out of ****