Miller's Crossing
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Movie Reviews of Miller's Crossing
Movie Review: The Jewish touch in gangster land
Summary: 5 Stars
A strange little film. Once again the Coen Brothers want to make an anti-genre film. This time they attack the genre of the gangster mafia in an eastern city that does not need a name but has to be big during prohibition. That mafia is working in clubs with bars and gambling tables, and in racketeering for protection. Two rival gangs and one chap taken in between Irish and Italian bosses or would-like-to-be-sole bosses. He has an affair with the girl friend of the Irish man and he shifts to the other side but then he is demanded to execute the brother of the woman, which he fakes and then this brother turns against him and he finally manages, after many sessions of punching and upper cutting that leave him every time healthy and strong, to trick and trap the brother who belongs to the Irish gang and the Italian boss into confronting each other at his own place and the brother kills the Italian boss and our man kills the brother and disguises the two deaths in a mutual gun fight and killing. He is back with his first boss the surviving Irish man who is going to marry the woman of before and forgives our man. But this one refuses that forgiveness that he has not asked and walks away. We will note a slight touch of Jewishness on that Irish man for the funeral of the brother. The cops in that prohibition situation are providing the street entertainment and the cleaning sessions in some clubs that are so wide open that a whole brigade of cops could run in without breaking the slightest piece of glass. But the best part remains the machine gun fights between the Irish boss and the hit men sent to assassinate him by the competitor. The chandelier turns into a "windmill" that is in fact a "bullet mill" and it is funny though it lasts only a second. Overkill is the motto and so many bullets and noise for just nothing is like using the space shuttle to go buy your daily bread at the next block bakery.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Movie Review: a little rough, but one of the Coens' best
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie can be a little hard to follow at first unless you keep handy a program of names--many characters are eagerly talked about for a while before you ever get to see them--and some of those characters make their first appearances with holes in their chests. This kind of confusion and awkward narrative is unfortunately somewhat typical to early Coen brothers movies: Blood Simple is a little mystifying in its timeline of the husband's death, and even Fargo is a little confusing when it comes to figuring out who knows who in the crime world, but despite that, this early chunk of movies, including this one, are some of the Coen brothers' best stuff.
This film, if there is any justice in the world, should be a cornerstone work in the modern gangster genre. Aside from capturing the grittiness of Prohibition-era life, as opposed to the overly clean _Chicago_-esque images, this is an intellectual and emotional gangster film. Aside from presenting a great cast (Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, John Polito), this movie explores the importance of love and loyalty in the darkness and violence of a crime underworld.
Don't get me wrong--this film is not sappy, nor is it appropriate for Lifetime airtime. Love among gangsters is of course stressful and antagonistic, but above all of the violence in this film is the strategic-minded advisor played by Gabriel Byrne, who digs through the complex relationships of gangland to sort out deep-rooted problems for his boss. Byrne's character distinguishes this movie so much from other gangster movies in that he is an intellectual gangster rather than a violent one. He barely ever has a gun, and while his strategies do not always run smoothly, the movie centers around his methods of playing people against each other to eventually gets what he wants.
It may take a couple of viewings to follow all the nuances of the plot here, but _Miller's Crossing_ is a magnificent picture.
Movie Review: "An Interesting Ethical Question"
Summary: 5 Stars
Since there are already 203 reviews of "Miller's Crossing here," I'll skip the plot summaries, raves about performances, references to Dashiell Hammett, etc., knowing the odds of my repeating at least one review on file are better than they are that one of Tom's bets will finally come in.
I'll save you some time: If you want a traditional shoot 'em up crime pic, all action and no brains,
keep walking. This ain't your picture.
I mean, this is a great gangster movie, make no mistake about it. It's got all the necessary ingredients: lots of violence (explosions, machine guns, arson), exuberantly shot; multiple, incestuous betrayals (professional, romantic, sexual); even a little love . . . . But none to spare. Nobody will ever accuse this movie of sentimentality.
Miller's Crossing is definitely more aimed at the head than the heart. That said, the film has some real emotional depth, with bonds of all sorts--professional, familial, romantic--straining, twisting, crossing, breaking, doublecrossing. There's a lot more feeling here than is obvious at first glance.
But the Coens are, as is their wont, riffing on a genre. They write characters like Johnny Casper (Jon Polito), a choleric little fireplug who muses about the nature of right and wrong ("an interesting ethical question . . . ") as he's sending his lieutenants out to murder his enemies or, when things get out of hand, doing the job himself.
Also, Joel and Ethan are so in love with the gorgeous lingo of the hard-boiled period gangster pic that they make it a featured player. If you share their love of language in general, and American slang in particular, Miller's Crossing will thrill you with its virtuosic wordplay.
Here's a question: How many times does world-weary Tom (Gabriel Byrne), the still water at the center of Miller's Crossing, get beat up? And how many times does he lose his hat?
Movie Review: "What's the rumpus?"
Summary: 5 Stars
Despite opening the New York Film Festival in 1990, Miller's Crossing was eclipsed by several other gangster films that year: some superior (GoodFellas) and some inferior (Godfather III, Mobsters), but all containing big-time movie stars that the Coen brothers' film did not have. Coupled with a detached, distanced approach to the characters and a densely textured plot with several implicit and explicit events occurring concurrently, Miller's Crossing became something of a cinematic oddity, a rare gem waiting to be re-discovered at the video store. Now, 20th Century Fox has finally released this underrated film on DVD with a beautiful transfer and a few extras.
"Shooting Miller's Crossing: A Conversation with Barry Sonnenfeld," is the director's take on how he got into films, how he met the Coen brothers and his experiences working on Miller's Crossing.
"Interview Soundbites," feature brief comments from Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden and John Turturro on working with the Coens and their views on their respective characters. They have the ring of a fluffy electronic press kit and look like they were done shortly after the film was completed.
There is the standard assortment of trailers for Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink and Raising Arizona.
Finally, there is a collection of stills from the movie that range from actual scenes to behind-the-scenes pictures.
Miller's Crossing has aged considerably well over the years. Even though it was marginalized at the time, only it and GoodFellas have endured. It also stands as one of the Coen brothers finest films of their career. This makes it all the more satisfying that 20th Century Fox has taken the time to release such a stunning transfer on DVD. While it would have been nice to have a stronger collection of supplemental material, this is still a movie every dedicated film fan should have in their library.
Movie Review: A brilliant, hard-boiled masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
It amazes me that this movie isn't better known -- it easily ranks alongside such classics as The Maltese Falcon, The Godfather (with a nice homage to that film's opening scene) and Chinatown. With a twisted, engrossing story reminiscent of a Chandler novel and dialogue ringing with a cool quotability that would make Tarantino green, Miller's Crossing is, without question, the standard of modern noir.
Although I've always liked their films, I've always thought that the Coen Brothers' movies were a little cold and distant, with more than a hint of pretentiousness. This has been a feature of everything they've done with the exceptions of Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing and Fargo -- you can enjoy their work but you really don't come away with much. Maybe it's their particular style -- foregoing the turgid melodrama that their contemporaries seem to think passes for 'real life', the Coen's rely on atmospherics and quirky characters. Sometimes their actors can overcome the quirkiness and develop a richness and intensity to the characters they're playing, sometimes they can't.
With Miller's Crossing, the Coens' were blessed with great actors possessing the talent to bring real depth to their characters -- every line of the flawless dialogue is delivered with such subtlety that it seems as though they're actually thinking about their words before speaking them. One pitfall of such snappy dialogue is that it can often become no more than bantering, the words becoming lost amidst their own coolness. In Miller's Crossing the actors transcend their own acting -- they seem to be real people, living in a real world.
Miller's Crossing is the finest movie the Coen Brothers have ever made, an unbelievably detailed, intelligently crafted film that can be watched over and over, each viewing revealing more depth and humanity than the last.
Man, I can't believe more people haven't seen this.