Coen brothers' remake of the 1955 Ealing comedy classic starring Alec Guiness, displaced from the English suburbs of the original to the American Southern Bible Belt. Tom Hanks stars as Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, a charming and loquacious Southern professor with dubious credentials who rents a room from black Baptist churchgoing lady Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall). She agrees to let Dorr use her basement to rehearse with his medieval music ensemble. What she doesn't yet know is that the 'musicians' Dorr has collected are in fact hardened yet bumbling criminals (who give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'thick as thieves'). Dorr and his gang have plotted to dig an underground tunnel from Mrs Munson's basement to rob the nearby cash storage office of a riverboat casino. However, circumstances - and the old lady - foil the gang at every turn.