THE HUDSUCKER PROXY (Directed by Joel Coen. Starring Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman)

Executive produced by Joel Silver, the action man behind the Lethal Weapons, Predators and Die Hards, The Hudsucker Proxy is the Coen brothers largest scale project. It is a relief to report that they have not blown their $25 million on big explosions and large scale destruction, although they have created one of the most stunning, sheerly exhilarating pieces of action to ever grace a movie screen: an opening suicidal leap from a 44 story building that takes the viewer on a swooping, vertigo-inducing one way ride to the pavement. It is not all downhill from there, although it is a long time before the film manages to recapture that sense of outrageous brilliance.

As wealthy industrialist Hudsucker (Charles Durning) hits rock bottom, bumpkin business graduate Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) begins a high speed flight to the top, set up as chairman by the Machiavellian Mussburger (Paul Newman), hoping to capitalise on his proxy’s patent stupidity. What follows is an oddball screwball comedy about business and destiny, that leans towards satire but verges on pastiche.

As producers, writers and directors of Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and Miller’s Crossing, Joel and Ethan Coen boast one of the most impressive CVs in modern cinema. Yet for all their astonishing surface style and perfectly integrated thematic content, these films rarely have any emotional resonance. There can be no doubt that the brothers know how to make movies, but there remains a lingering suspicion that what they are doing is assembling ingredients, and stringing together set-pieces.

With The Hudsucker Proxy, the ingredients are a little too clearly identifiable, although oddly combined. Nominally set in the fifties, mining a strong vein of comedy from the fads and fashions of the post-war era, the impressive art deco design is actually an immaculate fantasy of pre-war New York, and the main reference points are two contrasting strands of thirties and forties film-making – whimsical Capra-esque fantasy crossed with the hardboiled screwball cynicism of Sturges and Hawks. The film-making is so seemless you can’t actually see the join, but the pieces still don’t fit.

Part of the problem is the principal characters, both as written and as played. Norville Barnes has not been thought through – his IQ appears to shift improbably throughout the movie, smart one minute, stupid the next. He’s written from the outside, drawn from the charismatic, engagingly naive roles once played by a young Jimmy Stewart, with his characteristics altering to fit the needs of the plot. Tim Robbins carries off the slapstick comedy, but he is easier to laugh at than with, his physical presence (he’s a big galoot of a man) working against him: he looks too big to be easily intimidated, and his size lends a goofy dimension to his amiable stupidity.

The tiny Jennifer Jason Leigh makes a peculiar love interest, since she looks like she could throw her neck out trying to kiss him. Her character, as a fast talking reporter trying to get to the bottom of Paul Newman’s elaborate conspiracy, is clearly modelled on Rosalind Russell’s role in Hawks’ His Girl Friday, and she plays it more as an act of impersonation than characterisation, with a dose of Katharine Hepburn thrown in for good measure. Leigh has a lot of fun, and invigorates the movie whenever she’s on screen, but she seems to belong to a different film, and is (like Robbins) too stylised to really care about. And Paul Newman makes an intriguing stab at playing nasty, but never quite rises to the titanic heights required by the contrived setting.

All of the above makes for a lot of criticism for a film I would actually heartily recommend. I think The Hudsucker Proxy is a failure, but it is a glorious one, with a feast of pleasures to be enjoyed. The film’s design is more than merely impressive, it is beautifully integrated, with rooms and colours that seem to express the state of the characters’ minds, and subtly bring out the story’s thematic concerns. The camera moves through the immense Hudsucker building like a secret probe, revealing the parts hidden from the participants, and preparing us for a delightful leap into sheer fantasy as the satire on capitalism gives way to a comically pitched struggle between good and evil, and time is revealed to be the story’s real essence. It is in these latter stages that the flagging plot is revived, and the Coen’s give the movie an adrenalin shot to compare with the breathtaking opening. A circular motif ties a circular plot together, and when Tim Robbins reveals the meaning of the circle he has been carrying around on a piece of paper in his pocket the sequence of events that follows is perfectly choreographed, cinematically audacious delight.

While exposing the limitations of their hermetically sealed movie universe and betraying their weakness for set pieces, The Hudsucker Proxy entertains through the Coen brothers’ sheer cinematic confidence. It may well be their weakest film, but critical reviews and a poor commercial showing should not be allowed to drive them out onto their own window ledge, contemplating self destruction: their talent is such that they would have to fall a hell of a long way to reach the same level as most of the competition.