(2000) Escaping from a Mississippi penal farm's chain gang during the 1930s, in prison garb and shackled together, three men - Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), Pete (John Turturro), and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) - fail to hop a train but catch a prophecy from an old blind black man pumping along on a handcar. They have just four days to recover a treasure of $1.2 million in the Arktabutta Valley, which Everett told them he'd buried after robbing an armored car, before the TVA floods the valley behind a new dam.

Thus begins a comical, musical, Depression-era road picture from director Joel Coen (screenplay co-written with brother Ethan), based on Homer's Odyssey. When Pete questions Everett - "Who elected you leader of this outfit?" - the handsome conman (concerned about hair jell and hair nets) with the gift of gab replies: "Well Pete, I figured it should be the one with the capacity for abstract thought."

On the first day of their liberation the trio go to Pete's cousin's place where Wash Hogwallop removes their leg irons, but during the night Wash contacts Sheriff Cooley and his posse - "Damn! We're in a tight spot!" exclaims Everett; instead of getting the bounty, Wash watches his barn burn down and loses his car to the fugitives. Coming upon a baptism of a congregation in the river, Delmar and Pete receive redemption, having their sins washed away. Dismissive of religion and superstitious mumbo-jumbo ("You two are just dumber than a bag of hammers"), Everett, corrects Pete's reasoning: "Only a fool looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart."

In their stolen vehicle they pick up a young black man hitchhiking; Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) tells them he traded his soul for guitar lessons. At the WEZY radio station they claim to be the Soggy Bottom Boys, record the old-timey tune "Man of Constant Sorrow," get paid ten dollars each, and move on.

Briefly they become accidental associates of a manic-depressive bank robber - "Jesus saves, but George Nelson withdraws" - who after his thrill-seeking wears off leaves them with his loot and wanders off. Three Sirens singing in the river seduce their attention; when Delmar and Everett awake from their stupor, Pete is gone; Delmar believes his pal's been transmogrified into a toad. Next a one-eyed Bible salesman, Big Dan Teague (John Goodman), teaches the pair a harsh lesson.

Arriving in his hometown during the height of the gubernatorial campaign - the reform candidate Homer Stokes is railing against the incumbent Pappy O'Daniel - with the Wharvey girls singing on stage, Everett finds a suitor, Vernon T. Waldrip, Stokes's campaign manager, seeking his wife's hand in marriage; Penny (Holly Hunter) has told her six daughters that their daddy got hit by a train.

Following Everett and Delmar's getting banished from Woolworth's, they are warned in a picture theater: "Do not seek the treasure." Admitting that he'd been incarcerated for practicing law without a license, Everett lets the full truth come out. With Pete back in their company, they rescue Tommy from the Ku Klux Klan ("We gonna hang us a Negro"); but even though they receive a pardon from the governor when they discover their singing fame has preceded them, Sheriff Cooley ignores their pleas: "The law is a human institution."

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