Raising Arizona

Raising Arizona (1987) is about a couple who cannot have children stealing a baby from a wealthy family who have just had quintuplets. H.I. keeps robbing shops and going to prison. Ed is the officer who takes his fingerprints each time. They marry and cannot conceive; the adoption application is refused because of his record. Then the paper reports that Nathan Arizona, who owns a furniture chain, has had five sons. Ed does the arithmetic: there are five, they will not miss one. The opening runs about eleven minutes before the titles and fits the entire marriage, the prison cycle and the infertility into it. The credits only arrive after the baby is taken. It is the Coen brothers' second film and the opposite of their first: Blood Simple was a dark noir, this moves at the speed of a cartoon. Barry Sonnenfeld photographed it. The camera runs very low and very fast; there are single takes that come through a door, up a staircase and out of a window. Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter star. The score is built on yodelling and banjo and sets the whole register. The bounty hunter who appears in H.I.'s dream is both funny and genuinely unsettling. It did moderately and became a cult film later. It runs 94 minutes. Good for: the Coen brothers, black comedy, and the eighties. Less good for: the register is fast and exaggerated; anyone looking for realism will not find it.