Starring Tom Hanks and Irma P. Hall. Rated 14A.

Those who think O Brother, Where Art Thou? marks the zenith of Joel and Ethan Coen's filmmaking will probably enjoy the mannered excesses of this equally bizarre return to the American South. But for viewers whose tastes run more toward Fargo's dry Midwestern understatement, The Ladykillers will likely seem as over-the-top as pecan pie drizzled in corn syrup. Still, no matter where people's allegiances lie, it's impossible not to marvel at the twisted brothers' ingenuity and vividly warped brand of Americana--even when the Coens are being self-consciously silly.

This version has the same basic story as the '55 Brit gem that inspired it: a group of thieves use an unsuspecting old lady's house to stage a heist, but things go awry when they underestimate both her smarts and their own stupidity. Here, Tom Hanks steps into the shoes--and snaggle-tooth mouthpiece--of the original's smooth-talking ringleader, Alec Guinness. The Coens move the action to Mississippi, where Hanks's Goldthwait Higginson Dorr III, PhD--a classicist who talks like Tennessee Williams, liberally quotes Edgar Allan Poe, and dresses like a cross between Mark Twain and Colonel Sanders--convinces churchgoing Mrs. Munson (Irma P. Hall) that he and his motley crew want to use her root cellar to practise Renaissance music on period instruments. In fact, he and his ex--Viet Cong tunnelling expert, the General (Tzi Ma), handyman Garth Pancake (J. K. Simmons), human "battering ram" Lump (Ryan Hurst), and inside man Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans) plan to burrow into and rob a nearby casino.

The source material isn't as strange as it may sound for the Coens: it offers up all the black comedy, oddball characters, and slapstick violence that have typified their work. Aided by Roger Deakins's atmospheric lensing and a T. Bone Burnett soundtrack that ranges from gospel hymns to Nappy Roots' Kentucky rap, they also create a trippy, time-warpy slice of the South. Mrs. Munson dresses like it's pre--Civil War America, and her street of storybook houses looks straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird. But then you get the all-too-contemporary kitsch of the steamboat-theme casino and Gawain's dread-headed bad ass, whose "hippety-hop music" earns as many slaps from Mrs. Munson as his muthafuckas.

As for the cartoon characterizations, they're no more outlandish than, say, John Turturro's bug-eyed yokel in O Brother. Hanks chews up the scenery with those warped-shingle teeth, and though it's often distracting watching him, he manages to pull off lines like "And now to flog a horse that, if not dead, is in mortal dangeah of expirin' " with a flourish that demands points for shamelessness. But not all the comedy works as well: Lump's brain-dead mouth-breather and the General's hair-trigger commando get big laughs, while Gawain's broad stereotype and Pancake's ongoing efforts to educate his fellow rogues about his irritable-bowel syndrome fall embarrassingly flat.

Tellingly, it's Hall who hands in the standout performance as the indomitable woman who still talks to her husband's portrait over the fireplace and whose old-style virtues get the better of the gang. She's outsize enough and yet rooted close enough to the ground to please all Coen fans--whichever camp they fall into.