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Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
Starring George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Geoffrey Rush, and Billy Bob Thornton. Cinematography by Roger Deakins. Edited by Roderick Jaynes. Produced by Ethan Coen and Brian Grazer. Written by Robert Ramsey, Matthew Stone, John Romano, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen. Directed by Joel Coen
Miles Massey (played by George Clooney) is a millionaire divorce attorney who has developed a seemingly uncrackable prenuptial agreement. He is hired to represent Rex Rexroth (played by Edward Herrmann), a wealthy man who has been caught cheating on his wife, the lovely Marylin Rexroth (played by Catherine Zeta Jones). The odds are stacked against him, but Miles nevertheless wins the case.
Marylin approaches him sometime later asking him for his flawless pre-nup to secure her next marriage to multimillionaire Howard D. Doyle (played by Billy Bob Thornton). Miles is baffled to why she would want to apply his flawless contract to a wedding he feels that she is so obviously staging as another attempt for financial gain. The more time that the two spend together, the more Miles becomes stricken with her. The two eventually fall in love, but is it true love or just another one of her wicked games? Who cares.
Intolerable Cruetly is a project that Joel and Ethan Coen have had in the works for around eight years before its production. It was initially intended to fulfill a writing obligation they had with Universal Studios, but producer Brian Grazer absolutely loved the script and tried to persuade the Coens to direct it as well. Grazer’s request, along with the fact that George Clooney was interested in the project, influenced the Coens into putting their full creative resources into it.
Overall, Intolerable Cruelty does not feel like your Coen brother’s fare. It is much more of a conventional comedy than you might expect from them. The tone is much more lighthearted than what you would expect making it more commercially viable than their typical film. Their production experience was significantly different as well.
First and foremost, the budget for the project was sixty million dollars, far and beyond anything that the Coens had ever worked with before. Also, the brothers almost always write their films with actors that they want to use in mind. But since this was not written to be their film in the first place, the Coens had to go through a more extensive casting process than they were used to.
And finally, it’s also one of their few “current day” pictures. The majority of their films are period pieces. With all of these pieces stacked against them the Coens just seemed a little out of their comfort zone. I’ll avoid a pun citing that Intolerable Cruelty is “intolerable” or “cruel”, but unfortunately it is most certainly worth missing.
Budget: $60,000,000
Total US Gross: $35,327,628
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Runtime: 100 Minutes
US Release Date: 10/10/03
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Awards: none
Tagline: Engage The Enemy.
Quote: “I guess something inside of me died when I realized that you'd hired a goon to kill me.”
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