Though Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas will be remembered as the best gangster film to emerge from the year 1990, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Miller’s Crossing shouldn’t be dismissed. Something must have been in the air that year as Francis Ford Coppola also released the botched third part of his Godfather Trilogy and Abel Ferrara dropped his icy neo-gangster movie, King of New York. So, what hope did a pair of Jewish brothers from Minnesota have against a trio of heavy-hitting Italian directors, two of which who had already crafted some of the best gangster pictures ever?
Thirty-two years after its release, Miller’s Crossing occupies an odd place in the Coens’ filmography. Some rank the film as the Coens’ best, while others find it a heavy-handed distraction that tries to transcend the genre but fails. Perhaps when stacked against Goodfellas, Miller’s Crossing lacks authenticity, but the Coens have a created an idiosyncratic film with a serpentine plot that demands repeat viewings and still functions as a strong genre film more than three decades after its release.
Now that we’re nearly 20 movies deep in the Coens’ filmography, audiences have come to expect the brothers to genre hop. But after going from the noir nightmare of Blood Simple (1984) to the still dark, but more broadly comic Raising Arizona (1987), a period gangster film didn’t seem like the logical next step for the Coens. Initially known as The Bighead, Miller’s Crossing didn’t have an easy conception. The Coens suffered from writer’s block, pausing during the process to write Barton Fink before returning to Miller’s. Then, two days before shooting began, Trey Wilson (who also acted in Raising Arizona), died suddenly from a brain hemorrhage. His role, as Irish mob boss Leo O’Bannon would be recast with Albert Finney.
But while Scorsese and Coppola firmly rooted their gangster movies in ‘70s filmmaking, the Coens looked beyond that era when making Miller’s Crossing, using ‘30s gangster flicks as their inspiration. The Coens have long been purveyors of the English language – just look at the colloquialisms that make up the bulk of Raising Arizona’s screenplay – and Miller’s Crossing is a cornucopia of ‘30s slang from “what’s the rumpus” to “what is this, the high hat?” The story, though complicated, concerns one man, Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), who turns two mob factions against one another. So, while the Coens are using Dashiell Hammett as prime inspiration, they are also taking from Akira Kurosawa, specifically his spin on the American Western in Yojimbo (1961).
The Coens are also deferential to the canon and the opening sequence of Miller’s Crossing is a clear nod to Coppola’s first Godfather movie. Here, we see Italian gangster Johnny Caspar (played with panache by Coen favorite Jon Polito) coming to ask a favor of Leo. Caspar is upset because a bookie named Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro, another Coen favorite in his first role for the brothers) has been skimming off the fights Caspar has been fixing. Bernie is protected by Leo but Caspar asks permission to rub the bookie out. Tom, who is Leo’s fixer, suggests they let Caspar have Bernie. But Leo won’t give Bernie up. Not because the move would make sense but because he is seeing Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), Bernie’s sister. However, Leo doesn’t know that Verna is also sleeping with Tom. Enraged, Caspar vows to go to war if the situation isn’t rectified.
All these details are established in the opening moments of Miller’s Crossing, kicking off a twisty script full of double-crosses and power shifts. Byrne carries most of the weight, though, as the story follows Tom from one moral quagmire to the next. Does he sell out Bernie, even though he is sleeping with Verna, despite keeping their tryst a secret from Leo? Does he switch his loyalty to Caspar or stick by Leo? In some ways, Miller’s Crossing feels less about the twists than giving the Coens a chance to play with ‘30s vernacular. But when Caspar openly opines, “When you can’t trust the fix, what can you trust?” we realize Miller’s Crossing is really a study of loyalty, even if each character’s motivations are murky.
For fans of the Coen Brothers, Miller’s Crossing is loaded with the hallmarks found in many of their other films. The idea for the movie sprang from a vision of a black hat flying through the forest, held aloft by a gust of wind. At one point in the film, Tom tells Verna that he had a dream about losing his hat in the woods. Verna assumes that Tom chases his hat in the dream and that when he catches up to it, the hat turns into something wonderful. Tom rejects Verna’s version of the dream, tells her the hat remains a hat.
Tom may be one of the most inscrutable characters in the Coens’ filmography. He also takes more punches than anyone, even Nicolas Cage who gets his ass kicked in Raising Arizona. During one of the movies most memorable sequences, one where Tom takes Bernie out into the woods to shoot him, Bernie begs Tom to “look into his heart” and spare him. Do gangsters like Tom have a heart? The answer may lie within Miller’s Crossing. It also might not.
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