MILLER'S CROSSING
Date of publication: 10/05/1990
By Roger Ebert
The room. I keep thinking about the room. The office from which Leo pulls the strings that control the city. Leo, played by Albert Finney, is a large, strong man in late middle age, and he lacks confidence in only one area. He is not sure he can count on the love of Verna, the young dame he's fallen for. That causes him to hesitate when he knows that Verna's brother, Bernie, should be rubbed out. He doesn't want to lose Verna. And his hesitation brings the city's whole criminal framework crashing down in blood and violence.
But I think about the room. What a wonderful room. All steeped in dark shadows, with expensive antique oak furniture and leather chairs and brass fittings and vast spaces of flooring between the yellow pools of light. I would like to work in this room. A man could get something done in this room. And yet the room is a key to why "Miller's Crossing" is not quite as successful as it should be - why it seems like a movie that is constantly aware of itself, instead of a movie that gets on with business.
I do not really think that Leo would have such an office. I believe it is the kind of office that would be created by a good interior designer with contacts in England, and supplied to a rich lawyer. I am not sure a rackets boss in a big American city in 1929 would occupy such a space, even though it does set him off as a sinister presence among the shadows.
I am also not sure that the other characters in this movie would inhabit quite the same clothing, accents, haircuts and dwellings as we see them in. This doesn't look like a gangster movie, it looks like a commercial intended to look like a gangster movie. Everything is too designed. That goes for the plot and the dialogue, too. The dialogue is well-written, but it is indeed written. We admire the prose rather than the message. People make threats, and we think about how elegantly the threats are worded.
"Miller's Crossing" comes from two traditions that sometimes overlap, the gangster movie of the 1930s and the film noir of the 1940s. It finds its characters in the first and its visual style in the second, but the visuals lack a certain stylish tackiness that film noir sometimes had. They're in good taste. The plot is as simple as an old gangster movie, but it takes us a long time to figure that out, because the first half hour of the film involves the characters in complicated dialogue where they talk about a lot of people we haven't met, and refer to a lot of possibilities we don't understand. It's the kind of movie you have to figure out in hindsight.
Don't get me wrong. There is a lot here to admire. Albert Finney is especially good as Leo, the crime boss, and Jon Polito is wonderful as Johnny Caspar, his rival, who keeps talking about "business ethics." One of the most interesting characters in the movie is Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro), a two-timing bookie who pleads for his life in a monologue that he somehow keeps afloat long past any plausible dramatic length.
The pleasures of the film are largely technical. It is likely to be most appreciated by movie lovers who will enjoy its resonance with films of the past. What it doesn't have is a narrative magnet to pull us through - a story line that makes us really care what happens, aside from the elegant but mechanical manipulations of the plot. The one human moment comes when Leo finds out Verna really can't be trusted. Even then, I was thinking about "Farewell, My Lovely," where a big mug named Moose finds out the same thing about a dame named Velma.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miller's Crossing (1990)
A review by Damian Cannon.
Copyright © Movie Reviews UK 1997
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While Miller's Crossing is a standard gangster movie, it's filtering through the Coen brothers' synapses imbues it with their unique style. Set in somewhere around the 1920s, the nameless town featured is firmly under the criminal thumb of Leo (Albert Finney). With the Mayor (Richard Woods) and Police Chief (Thomas Toner) stashed in his back pocket, the profits from gambling and extortion roll in. When Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito), a lower-level hood, comes asking for a favour (the rubbing out of Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro), a bent bookmaker), Leo should really acquiesce. However, he doesn't and Caspar becomes apoplectic in the Italian fashion, demanding satisfaction. Leo simply sits behind his massive oak desk, looking dour in the Irish fashion!.
The background to his denial, which conflicts with all sense, starts with good- time girl Verna (Marcia Gay Harden) and the fact that Bernie is her brother. She'll do anything to look after family and if that includes letting Leo think that they're in love then that's fine. Leo's trusted associate Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) sees right through this set-up for at least one reason, namely that he's sleeping with Verna too. Besides this, he realises that protecting Bernie at the expense of Caspar is unwise, particularly because Leo underestimates the power help by his opponent. Tom has problems of his own though, principally mounting gambling debts, and Leo is in no mood to heed his counsel.
Thus the foundations for a bloody gang war are laid out, all because Leo truly believes that Verna is his alone. She's far harder than he or anyone else suspects, perfectly able to take care of herself without his clumsy tail (who's later found hunched over a .22 bullet with his hairpiece missing). Drawing the obvious conclusion that Caspar is responsible for this outrage, Leo hikes the tension levels a notch higher and briefs his stooges for the coming battle. Tom is party to these preparations and seems powerless to influence the chaos, particularly now that a death is involved. Finally, Tom reaches into the depths of his soul, where his unyielding devotion to Leo resides, and makes the ultimate sacrifice. By revealing certain relationships he fractures their partnership and forces Leo to release him as a free entity, who can gravitate to the side of Caspar if he so wishes.
Miller's Crossing is a triumph for the art of storytelling, with the Coen's confident in their ability to draw viewers into their imagination. This means no explanations and no compromises as the characters launch into their dense dialogue, complaining about unseen figures and moulding their phrases with thick accents. Not unsurprisingly this makes for a tricky to grasp beginning, which is in fact rather off-putting. The miracle is that at a certain point it all snaps into focus and suddenly the atmosphere, characters and mood fit snugly into this artificial gangster world. The stylish sets and excellent cinematography place the protagonists in darkness, obliquely referring to their moral status. The scene is set for an appraisal of complex themes and complex people.
Friendship, trust, loyalty and ethics - these are all themes handled by Miller's Crossing in a mature and natural fashion. While none of the major roles stir up much of a caring response, they each have something more precious. They have the aura of being alive. Byrne is excellent as the smart, troubled deputy, adeptly handling snappy lines and remaining cool under fire. Positioned between Polito and Finney, both fiery and commanding, he is the ultimate arbiter of justice. It's undeniable that Miller's Crossing is a tough beast to harness at first, but with perseverance it reaps great rewards and some marvellous moments of resonance with cinema history.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miller's Crossing: Nothing But Trouble
"Remember, ya always gotta put one in the brain. The first one puts him down, the second one finishes him off. Then, we go home." - random gangster on his philosophy of life, Millers' Crossing'
The rival gangster in town (Jon Polito) loves his little boy, doting on him at every chance he gets, but the kid better watch out. As he's trying to talk with Tommy (Gabriel Byrne), the pudgy little guy is shouting frantically for his father's attention attention... until the gangster smacks him in the face and yells: "Shaddup! Daddy's trying to do business here!"
It's a good thing for Tommy that his fuse is so short, because his survival over the next week or so is going to depend on it. He's had a falling out with his boss Leo, a guy who he cares deeply for but is currently involved with a moll Marcia Gay Harden) that Tommy doesn't like one bit. Of course, that doesn't stop Tommy from sleeping with her. But the real problem is that the moll's brother Bernie (John Turturro) is a crooked bookie who's ripping off Johnny Caspar by screwing up his fixes on the fights.
"If you can't trust a fixed fix, what can you trust?" he asks Leo in the opening scene. Bumping off Turturro makes sense, but Leo is so wrapped around his girlfriend's finger that he won't lift a finger. Which leaves it up to Tommy.
Co- writer and producer Ethan Coen knows that the only thing certain about being in charge in the underworld is that sooner or later, somebody comes looking for your head. Headhunting leads to violence, which leads to war. And when things get into all-out war, it's the people who choose the right side a the beginning who are the victors, and the losers are quite simply dead. With Tommy, Ethan creates a landmark gangster character whose monomania about setting things even once again for Leo is the driving force behind everything in the picture. Like Iago, Tommy insinuates himself with Caspar and warns him against imaginary plots like those posed by his icily brutal lieutenant The Dane (J.E. Freeman). Tommy's skulduggery is incredible and his guts even more so. When Polito questions one of his theories, Tommy simply stares at him for a moment then looks away, as if wondering how anybody could be so stupid. It works: Caspar jumps right back in and plays along with him.
"Maybe that's why I like you, Tommy. I've never known anybody who made being a son of a bitch such a point of pride," Verna tells him bitterly. Gabriel Byrne is spookily believable as a sociopathic liar who turns the Italian's empire upside down in a matter of days. The supreme irony is that when war breaks out between the two factions, from Leo's point of view it's all completely unnecessary. All he has to do is send Tommy over in a gift-wrapped box and wait for the backstabbing to die down. He's a one man wrecking machine, bent on bringing his enemies down. His depths of deception and plotting are dizzying at time, and sometimes you don't know what's going on until after it's happened. Occasionally, neither does Tommy.
Before this can happen comes Miller's Crossing most famous sequence: the woods, where Byrne has taken Turturro to be executed. Director Joel Coen's stark filming and shots of Tommy marching behind his sacrificial lamb, hat down over his eyes seem to go on forever. We're almost thankful when Turturro pleads cravenly for his life, begging him to "look in your heart, Tommy, look in your heart." And Tommy does not kill him, setting him free with instructions to disappear. It's the only mistake he makes, but it's a doozy.
A couple days later, The Dane and two of the Italian's boys pick up Tommy walking down the street (kidnap is probably the more appropriate term) and tell him they're going for a little ride. It seems rumor has it that Turturro isn't dead, and they can't find a fresh stiff out at Miller's Crossing, they're going to leave another one. But Tommy has figured out a way around it, and by the end of the movie Turturro is once again pleading for his life in Tommy's hallway. He drops to his knees, hands wrining, and implores Tommy once again to look into his heart.
"What heart?" Tommy asks coldly, and shoots him in the head. He's learning: you always gotta put one in the brain.
Violent and darkly filmed, Miller's Crossing remains of the most stylish and best-done gangster films of the past twenty years. Unlike the flatly dry The Untouchables (a surprising combo from Pulitzer-wwing playwright David Mamet), there is moments of genuine black humor, a Coen Brothers trademark. After one of Tommy's patented double crosses has unfolded, The Dane is trying to get up from Caspar's floor, nose dripping blood. The fat man looks over, grunts contemptously, waddles over, picks up his gun and plugs his lieutenant right in the dome. "You always gotta put one in the brain! That's what I tell my boys!" he says in a happy tone of voice. Black humor, indeed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Miller's Crossing" (R)
By Rita Kempley
Washington Post Staff Writer
October 05, 1990
"Miller's Crossing" is brooding, dark and as coldly gleaming as gun metal. A gangster noir movie written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, it is a grim classic to admire if not to love, a Dashiell Hammett-style jigsaw of hard-boiled argot, dame troubles and existential dread. As violent as the streets of Washington, this Prohibition-era drama -- "a dirty town movie," the Coens call it -- is more than a little at home as a blood-and-pulp parable for these times.
Gabriel Byrne is the quintessential noir loner, a moralist whose Bambi eyes belie his tough guy's air. Adhering to a twisted chivalric code, he is Bogart by way of Dublin, a rigid man of honor among thieves. And "Miller's Crossing" is very much a story of honor among thieves. In its hard heart of hearts, it is a masterfully written and visually unsettling study in manly love.
In the leading role of Tom, Byrne is torn -- make that shredded -- between his fedora-covered head and his scabbed-over heart. The hat, symbolic of Tom's quandary, leads a life of its own, blowing off in the wind, then magically reappearing on the stair. Like many a Hammett hero, Tom would keep everything under his hat, if only he could keep it on his handsome head. And it's no accident that the movie's moll, Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), wins it from him in a game of chance. Love's a gamble and Tom, in debt to the local loan shark, has a record as a loser.
Verna is the boss's girl, a classic put-your-lips-together-and-blow broad, a heart-melting icicle queen with cast-iron defense mechanisms and finger-waved hair. Good at taking care of herself, she talks in catty claw-and-scratch. "Intimidating helpless women is part of my job," says Tom, grabbing her arm. "Well, go out and find one and intimidate her," Verna returns. Naturally Tom, hat tipped back over his glossy waves, wants her even more. Now he's caught between his duty to his boss, Leo (Albert Finney), and Verna's silken allure.
Tom is Leo's closest adviser and the older man loves him, in his hood's way, like the son he's never had. But he's even crazier about Verna. "You don't like her, Tom, but I trust her as much as I trust you," says Leo. And so Tom confesses a night with Verna and the partnership is dissolved. Tom signs on with Leo's rival, the hotheaded Italian Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito), who orders him to ice Verna's odious brother, Bernie (John Turturro), a bookie under Leo's protection.
"It's getting so a businessman can't expect a return on a fixed fight," complains Caspar, whose priorities aren't really all that unlike those of certain S&L chieftains. A little kingpin with an inferiority complex, he is easily manipulated by Tom, who convinces him that his henchman Dane (J.E. Freeman) is in cahoots with Bernie, allegedly Dane's homosexual lover. Whether straight or gay, the brutes find it impossible to cope with their feelings, which erupt in a volley of bullets and bashed brains.
"Miller's Crossing" explores that tension between cold blood and white heat in a thunderclap of venom and gunfire. If Tom's heart is pierced at all, it is merely for taking the pulse of the times. The Coens are playing a controlling game, the same as their cast of characters, and control frustrates passion, irrevocably. Love among these gangsters is a hard-luck affair.
But casting noir is another matter altogether. The Coens always get their girl, whether she is Frances McDormand of "Blood Simple," Holly Hunter of "Raising Arizona" or Harden here. All of them are astonishingly fierce actresses who approach their roles with quirky zeal. Harden, eloquent as the cheap satin moll, is an alumna of the stage, like most others in this explosive company. Finney, Byrne and Polito, to varying degrees, all seem capable of nuclear hatred. And do they ever blow.
