Raising Arizona (1987) on Netflix
PG-1319871h 34mComedyCrimeDrama
Ex-convict Hi marries Edwina, the officer who photographs him after each arrest. She cannot conceive and his record blocks adoption, so they take one of Nathan Arizona's quintuplets.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.3/10162,286 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
Hi robs convenience stores in Arizona, and Edwina, who goes by Ed, is the police officer who takes his mugshot each time he is arrested. The man she was engaged to had gone off with a younger woman, and Hi comforts her; after he leaves prison he asks her to marry him, and they settle in a mobile home in the desert. Ed cannot conceive, and Hi's criminal record keeps the two of them from adopting, though they both want children. Learning that Nathan Arizona, a furniture magnate, has fathered quintuplet sons, they take one of the babies home to raise. Hi's former cellmates, Gale and Evelle Snoats, then break out of prison and turn up at the trailer.
Cast
- T.J. Kuhnas Nathan Arizona Jr. (as T.J. Kuhn Jr.)
- Charles 'Lew' Smithas Nice Old Grocery Man
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Raising Arizona (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Nicolas Cage's working relationship with the Coen brothers was tense: whenever he pitched suggestions on set, Joel and Ethan ignored them, and Cage later said he had to learn to accept the brothers' "autocratic nature."
- Despite the film's later cult status, Ethan Coen said in 2000 that Raising Arizona was still the last movie he and Joel had made that turned any real profit, even accounting for hits like The Big Lebowski.
- Co-star Randall "Tex" Cobb was difficult to direct, with Joel Coen describing him afterward as more a force of nature than an actor and saying he wasn't sure he'd cast him again.
- The Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland ranked the film's bank robbery scene as the second-best bank robbery in movie history, placing it just behind the 1995 thriller Heat.
- The Coens wrote the character Ed for Holly Hunter, and in contrast to their earlier Blood Simple the characters in Raising Arizona were written to be very sympathetic.
- Director Edgar Wright has named Raising Arizona his all-time favorite film, and Spike Lee included it on his own list of essential films.
- The villain Leonard Smalls' name is thought to nod to Lennie Small, the character from John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men.
