The greatest criminal minds of all time finally meet their match in this, the Coen brothers' riotous Deep South reinvention of Alexander Mackendrick's beloved 1955 Ealing comedy.

Tom Hanks stars as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, Ph.D., a charlatan professor who has assembled a motley crew of crooks to try and pull off the heist of the century. Their base of operations is the root cellar of an unsuspecting church-going lady by the name of Mrs Munson (Irma P. Hall). The story they offer Mrs Munson is that they are a band of musicians in need of a place to practise their church music. But it fast becomes apparent that Dorr's gang - 'hippety-hop' enthusiast Gawain MacSam, demolition 'expert' Garth Pancake, Vietnamese ex-tunnel rat 'The General', and football jock Lump - may not be up to the mission at hand. Moreover, they have all seriously underestimated their upstairs host . . .