The Coen Brothers make a lot of interesting movies.\u00a0 Some I like more than others.\u00a0 Miller\u2019s Crossing is one of my favorites.\u00a0 It\u2019s a gangster story in an unidentified southern city during the 1930s.\u00a0 Albert Finney is Leo O\u2019Bannon, an Irish gangster who runs the city.\u00a0 Gabriel Byrne is Tom Reagan, Leo\u2019s right-hand man and best friend.\u00a0 Verna is Leo\u2019s girl.\u00a0 But she\u2019s also sleeping with Tom.\u00a0 Verna\u2019s brother, Bernie (played by John Turturro) and \u00a0Mink Larouie (played by Steve Buscemi) are small-time bookies who have crossed another gangster, Johnny Caspar.\u00a0 Caspar wants Bernie dead and Leo won\u2019t let it happen because of Verna. \u00a0Tom knows that Bernie and Verna spell disaster for Leo and advises him to give up Bernie.\u00a0 So, this is the complicated basis of the story.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not the reason to watch the movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s a comic book version of a 30s gangster movie.\u00a0 A gangster can be bounced down three flights of marble stairs and walk away from it all in one piece. The cops and the city administration will switch back and forth between mob allegiances on an hour\u2019s notice and bring to bear against their former allies all the force of military grade weaponry.<\/p>\n
The movie has a fine soundtrack that includes popular music of the era, Irish folk music and even a little Italian opera.\u00a0 My favorite scene is an attempted mob rubout at Leo\u2019s house.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bullet riddled ballet to the accompaniment of Danny Boy.\u00a0 It\u2019s in this scene that Albert Finney proves that a Thompson machine gun will never run out of ammunition.\u00a0 It\u2019s a thing of nihilistic beauty.<\/p>\n
Finney, Turturro and Buscemi are all extremely entertaining but Gabriel Byrne is the center of the movie.\u00a0 His character Tom is a hardened bitter man who nevertheless lives by a code that requires loyalty to a friend.\u00a0 In fact, his loyalty to Leo is the only admirable behavior displayed in the whole movie.\u00a0 And even this is wholly doomed by their relationships with Verna.\u00a0 Basically, everyone is corrupt.\u00a0 The good guys are mobsters.\u00a0 The bad guys are mobsters.\u00a0 There\u2019s even a scene where a little kid sees a dead mobster on the street and steals his toupee.<\/p>\n
And because this is a Coen Brothers movie it is suffused with black humor.\u00a0 Every mob rubout and brutal beating is chock full of jokes and wisecracks.\u00a0 The mobsters and cops in the movie are prone to witticisms and philosophical musings that probably rarely occur in real mobsters and cops.\u00a0 The best example is when Johnny Gaspar explains to Leo that Bernie\u2019s selling of Johnny\u2019s fixed fight information demonstrates Bernie\u2019s lack of moral character.<\/p>\n
Miller\u2019s Crossing is a typical Coen Brothers movie.\u00a0 All the characters are morally compromised and happy endings are extremely scarce and never unmitigated.\u00a0 If you have enjoyed any of their other movies then I highly recommend Miller\u2019s Crossing.\u00a0 Otherwise, read my description and decide for yourself if this type of film is for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Coen Brothers make a lot of interesting movies.\u00a0 Some I like more than others.\u00a0 Miller\u2019s Crossing is one of my favorites.\u00a0 It\u2019s a gangster<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[1587,1588,43,38],"class_list":["post-5463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-coen-brothers","tag-millers-crossing","tag-movie-review","tag-review"],"yoast_head":"\n