Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
When a childless couple—an ex-con and an ex-cop—take one of a wealthy family’s quintuplets to raise as their own, their lives grow more complicated than anticipated.
Raising Arizona is one of the Coens' most distinctive early works — a hyperkinetic, surrealist screwball comedy with an utterly singular voice. The plot is inventive and escalates with anarchic energy, the performances (Cage, Hunter, Goodman, Forsythe) are wildly committed and perfectly pitched to the absurdist tone, and Deakins-era-adjacent cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld is kinetic and creative (the chase sequences are remarkable). Novelty is sky-high — no film sounds, moves, or feels quite like this one. The ending is warm and emotionally resonant but slightly sentimental in a way that softens the film's sharper edges, making it the one category that falls just slightly short of the others.