Ralph Fiennes has a supporting role as a film director, Laurence Laurentz. Laurence is an established director who presumably has both critics and audiences alike in love with his previous work. But when he is forced to work with a terrible actor who is used to acting in westerns on horseback with all the film crew several hundred feet away on his dialogue drama shot on a controlled set, he loses it. Alden Ehrenreich plays Hobie Doyle, " A cowboy by trade who was plucked from obscurity by Capitol Pictures to become a leading man."(Description taken from Hail, Caesar official website: www.hailcaesarmovie.com), who lacks any basic acting talent. The two share a memorable and hilarious scene together, and the pitting of the established artist against the uninitiated "actor" is quite a treat to watch for just the comedy of it.

The Coen Brothers' film primarily wants to look at the movie studio as the powerful institution that it was. It shows us the grand sets that the studio built for these magnificent "prestige-pictures" that Hollywood made in an effort to deal with the rise of television, and to ease the fears of communism and the resulting decline in movie profits of course. The latter is a much more important factor to the directors, as the film twists and turns to show us who the real "commies" are and who turns out to believe in the "commie" cause. It has a lot to comment on both the literal ownership of factors of production by large studios of the time as well as the high level of control it held over all the people involved with them, mainly the public face of things: The actors. The film also ruminates for some time over Biblical imagery. For the film being produced inside this movie is centred around the story of Christ, it tries to build a redemptive story for the lead character, Mannix at the end too, but doesn't tie all loose ends up like the typical film of the time it takes place in. A group called "The Future", which consists of a bunch of communist intellctuals, often discuss economics, politics and other high-brow subjects with the dumb-founded Baird Whitlock, who is the epitome of a victim of the capitalist machine, and on a meta-level it was extremely hilarious in the satire the film was trying to present.

Bottomline: There is a lot of important stuff that the film explores, particularly the time period and the "Red Fear" combined with the all-powerful dream-manufacturing movie studio, and at the same time it manages to be an entertaining dialogue-driven film at the most superficial level. Good job, Ethan and Joel Coen! Can't wait for what's next!