Raising Arizona

Raising Arizona is the Coen Brothers at their most joyfully unhinged — a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon about a recidivist convenience store robber and a policewoman who fall in love, cannot have children, and decide to steal one of the Arizona quintuplets because, as H.I. McDunnough reasons, 'they got more than they can handle.' Nicolas Cage delivers the most Nicolas Cage performance of his career — operatic, sincere, and completely insane — and Holly Hunter matches him beat for absurd beat.

The film's visual style is the Coens' most energetic. Barry Sonnenfeld's camera races, swoops, and crashes through trailer parks and desert highways with the manic energy of a Road Runner cartoon. The chase sequence — where H.I. robs a convenience store for diapers and is pursued by dogs, cops, and a shotgun-wielding store clerk through suburban homes — is one of the greatest physical comedy sequences in cinema.

John Goodman and William Forsythe as the escaped convict brothers Gale and Evelle — rising from the mud like demons — add a layer of anarchic menace. And Randall 'Tex' Cobb as the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse is the Coens' most terrifying creation. Raising Arizona is a film about people who want something so simple — a family — and pursue it through the most complicated possible means. The final dream sequence is one of the most beautiful endings in any comedy.