Description

The Coen Brothers own unique take on Homer’s Odyssey sets the action in 1930s Mississippi, where three clueless convicts escape a chain gang and go in search of buried treasure. This leads to a series of unlikely adventures – involving one-eyed con-men, seductive sirens and Ku Klux Klan lynchings – which culminate with the boys inadvertently discovering fame as hit recording artists The Soggy Bottom Boys. Starring George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson as the hapless heroes, and featuring a soundtrack jam-packed with American folk standards, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ takes its title from the film-within-a-film in Preston Sturges’ 1941 classic ‘Sullivan’s Travels’. Disenchanted with the daily drudge of crushing rocks on a prison farm in Mississippi, the dapper, silver-tongued Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) busts loose. Except he’s still shackled to his own chain-mates from the chain gang — bad-tempered Pete (John Turturro), and sweet, dimwitted Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson). With nothing to lose and buried loot to regain — before it’s lost forever in a flood — the three embark on the adventure of a lifetime in this hilarious offbeat road picture. Populated with strange characters, including a blind prophet, sexy sirens, and a one-eyed Bible salesman (John Goodman), it’s an odyssey filled with chases, close calls, near misses, and betrayal that will leave you laughing at every outrageous and surprising twist and turn.