Miller's Crossing Is Another Early Coen Brothers Winner

For their third directorial effort, The Coen Brothers (though only Joel Coen is credited as a director) returned to the crime genre that has served them well so many times in their expansive careers. For this particular take on the crime movie formula, they decided to go in the direction of a period piece, setting the tale in the 1920's specifically. Despite being set in the era where the sale of alcohol was banned, the film, entitled Miller's Crossing, was actually taking more cues in its tone and style from 1940's noir features, particularly ones like The Big Sleep involving a single lead character trying to use their wits to make a whole bunch of other peoples agendas work in his favor.

That lead character is Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne, who played the Hot Dad in Hereditary earlier this year), loyal accomplice to crime boss Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney). O'Bannon has forbidden Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) to murder bookie Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro), causing a ruckus between the two crime lords that Reagan ends up in the middle of, particularly once Leo learns that Tom has been sleeping with his girlfriend. Formerly tight alliances are being shattered and now Tom Reagan and the hat atop his head are just trying to stay one step ahead of two rival criminal empires that control the whole city right down to the corrupt police force.

Such a process makes for a fun viewing, particularly since it's a delight to hear gangster dialogue as penned by Joel and Ethan Coen. Like they would do with Burn After Reading nearly two decades later, the Coen Brothers get some exceptional dialogue out of handling criminals who aren't quite as perfect at this whole criminal game as they might think. Their reinforces this idea by constantly emphasizing that, though these guys may be making sure certain individuals are sleeping with the fishes, they're still discernably people at the end of the day after all. This is particularly true in the case of the humorous dialogue for Johnny Caspar, a quintessential tough guy figure who the Coens seem to be having a blast writing lines for.

Whether it's the words he spews at his enemies when he loses his temper or whether they're writing down the woe-ridden dialogue that he utters while wishing other gangsters would cling to the concept of ethics and morality like he proclaims that he does, this character really is the best-written role in the entire movie and he's brought to life by an exemplary turn by Jon Polito. The writing's love for juxtaposing gangster figures with discernable humanity creeps up once more with Tom Reagan, a guy who's got some wits about him but isn't an all-powerful God-figure, a lot of the time he barely gets out of certain scrapes within an inch of his life and with more than a dash of luck by his side. Some of the best moments of Miller's Crossing come from the creative and unexpected ways he manages to stay one step ahead of his adversaries.

If the duo's writing has a flaw, it's in the critical character of Verna Bernbaum who is basically just a stock type character without much in the way of a distinct personality to her name. The rest of the figures in this story feel, in some way either big or small, like deconstructions of typical gangster movie figures whereas she feels like she could slip right into a typical gangster movie without a problem. This leaves Marcia Gay Harden without all that much to do, though she's really the only dud to be found in an otherwise remarkable cast that makes use of both Coen Brothers regulars (John Turturro and Steve Buscemi show up) as well as some performers that have only worked with the duo on this single occasion.

Among the latter class of performers is Albert Finney, who does sharp work as a gangster with a bone to pick with Tom Reagan and who gets to do sublime dialogue-free work in the best scene of Miller's Crossing, an assassination attempt on his characters life set to the tune of Danny Boy. It's a marvelously well-edited and entertaining scene that gets a lot of exciting fun out of the sight of watching this mob boss clearly demonstrate why he's earned his legendary reputation. Though I might rank it as one of the weaker films in their stacked filmography, that showstopper sequence alone makes Miller's Crossing special and it's far from the only noteworthy element to be found here. This one's a homage to gangster movies of the past that works plenty well as its own stand-alone entity.