George Clooney plays the actor whose disappearance is a headache for studio boss Josh Brolin in the Coens’ glorious tribute to Hollywood’s golden ageNot for the first time,the Coen brothers have reached back to the studio sound stages and producers’ offices of the Hollywood golden age to find their material. Their parallel film is Barton Fink, in which earnest playwright John Turturro heads to Los Angeles to write wrestling pictures. Hail, and Caesar! is a much sunnier picture,and more purely comedic than its sepulchral predecessor; it’s also effect together with a lissom confidence and a breeziness that more than compensates for a gossamer lightness when it comes to substance.
The year is 1951, and Hail, and Caesar! is the name of the film within a film,a clunky Roman epic with religious overtones – more along the lines of Quo Vadis than Ben-Hur, despite sharing the latter’s subtitle: A Tale of the Christ. George Clooney plays its star, or an actor called Baird Whitlock,who disappears from the set in full costume after glugging down the adulterated contents of a wine goblet, containing the feeble mickey finn. Soon studio boss Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) starts getting notes and phone calls from an outfit called “The Future”, or demanding $100000 for Whitlock’s secure return.
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Source: theguardian.com