Posted: Apr 10, 08 5:44pm
Before "No Country for Old Men". Before "Fargo". After "Stealing Arizona".
Yes, it's the Coen Brothers, but one of their most overlooked films. "Miller's Crossing" is one of my all-time favorites, and for a vast number of reasons.
First, the cinematography is outstanding. The film takes place in the 1930s, so it does has the advantage of being a period piece, but the film work here is simply superb. There is a woods scene that makes you feel you are almost there, between the creaking of the trees in the wind and the eerie way the forest obscures your vision.
Second, the cast is top notch. Gabriel Byrne plays Tom, the adviser to Irish mob leader/political boss Leo (played by last-minute replacement Albert Finney, who almost steals the whole show). Leo isn't listening to his adviser these days, because he's being led around by a dark little seductress named Verna (played by Marcia Gay-Harden in probably her best role). She's out to protect her brother Bernie (John Turturro) a low-life grifter who has angered the leader of the city's Italian mob. Yes, it's a gangster movie.
Third, the dialogue is fascinating. Though using a lot of 1930s vernacular, the characters still get their meaning across, and do it with cutting, dark humor. This is an intelligent whodunnit, as the murder of one of Leo's henchmen leads to a near war between the Irish and the Italians and everyone (including Tom) has to re-think which side he's on. At one point Tom is disciplined by Leo's top enforcer with a sucker punch that lands him on the ground, to which he says, "Hello, Terry. Getting out the vote?"
The movie is loaded with lines like that. The leader of the rival mob, complaining to Leo that Turturro is leaking the information that he's got a fixed fight coming up, asks: "If you can't trust the fix, what can you trust?" When Verna tells Tom that he has come to see her "for the oldest reason there is", he replies, "There are friendlier places to drink."
As a warning, there is a fair amount of violence in this film (it is, after all, a gangster movie). But the story line is so tight, and the characters so strong, that it's worth it. I had no idea how things were going to turn out at the end, and so I'll close with the sardonic wisdom of the rival gang's top enforcer, commenting on Tom's changing nature: "Mister Inside-Outskey, straight as a corkscrew. Up is down. Black is white."
