"The Ladykillers," from Joel and Ethan Coen, is a baroque dark comedy starring Tom Hanks as a professorial thief, Marlon Wayans as his hair-trigger henchman and Irma P. Hall as their indestructible landlady.

Based on the 1955 British classic of the same name, by director Alexander Mackendrick and writer William Rose, this movie turns into another offbeat Coen gem, gleaming with verbal and pictorial style, exploding with wit and slapstick.

The Coen "Ladykillers" - with Hanks, Wayans and Hall in sparkling new versions of the roles originated by Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Katie Johnson - is an elegant, mad movie about murder, fumble-fingered crooks and sweet little old ladies. It's a picture that sometimes seems 30 years behind its time. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Joel and Ethan Coen have always been expert revivers of America's cinematic and literary past. They're trying something only slightly different here, taking one of the greatest British comedies from the '50s (a movie about 10 years ahead of its time) and retooling it for America now.

That first "Ladykillers" still quickens the pulses and gladdens the hearts of most who remember it, and it supplies the Coens with one of most ingeniously irreverent of all comic movie premises.

In both films, a gang of colorful but mismatched thieves, led by a phony "professor," conduct a heist from the house of their seemingly sweet little old landlady. Then, when she discovers what's up, they keep trying - and failing - to bump her off.

It's an idea perfect for the Coens, creators of those brilliant dysfunctional-crime movies "Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona" and "Fargo." Trying this time to please the mass audience and the cognoscenti, they've delightfully updated and expanded Rose's idea.

Moving "The Ladykillers" from '50s London to modern Natchez, Miss., they turn Guinness' smiley, devious Professor Marcus into Hanks' decadent Southern pseudo-aristocrat Goldthwait Higginson Dorr. Johnson's imperishable landlady, Mrs. Wilberforce, becomes an almost equally wonderful role for Hall, as Southern Baptist church lady Marva Munson, a devout grandmotherly nemesis with a mean wallop.

There are other shifts. The Coens and Wayans morph Sellers' "Teddy boy" character into hip-hop street tough Gawain MacSam, a volatile "inside man" who forever picks fights. The roles of the other '55 ladykillers (Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom and Danny Green) are reimagined amusingly for J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma and Ryan Hurst. In almost every case, the new translation works - spectacularly so in the cases of Hanks and Hall.

The biggest stretch might seem to be casting the often Jimmy Stewart-esque Hanks as the glib, perverse, toothy Guinness villain. But Hanks nails Dorr, playing this immoral conniver with such a delicious mix of slyness and boozy eloquence that one wonders if he'll need his all-American nice-guy credentials recertified for the next "Forrest Gump." Against him, Hall's Mrs. Munson is so stubborn and indomitable that we can imagine her beating whole armies, much less this tawdry gang.

Done with an enticing mixture of lacerating comedy, lush Roger Deakins cinematography, robust acting and juicy lines, the Coens' "Ladykillers" is often glorious fun to watch. It won't please everyone, of course. And, truth to tell, it's not as good as its source - though very few movies are.

As even Professor Dorr (or Professor Marcus) might say, history may not repeat itself, but in the right hands, great jokes tend to work every time.