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Ten Days Of The Coen Brothers: Day Two
A Poor Fit
♦ With the release of Hail, Caesar! in the UK on 4 March, Tripwire kicks off a look at all of the Coen Brothers films released to date. First we reviewed their debut Blood Simple and Raising Arizona yesterday and now our editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes a look at their third film Miller’s Crossing (1990).
Miller’s Crossing
Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Stars: Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, John Turturro
Miller’s Crossing was released three years after Raising Arizona and it saw them playing in a different sandbox again to its predecessors. Miller’s Crossing has at its heart Tom Regan (Gabriel Byrne), an advisor to Prohibition-era Irish gangster Leo (Albert Finney), who finds himself caught in the middle of a turf war between his boss and Johnny Caspar (John Polito).
Coen Brothers’ films always subvert the genre that they loosely adhere to, and Miller’s Crossing, a heavily stylised pastiche of Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key, is no exception. It is a gangster film but a horse of a different colour to films like Goodfellas or The Godfather. And therein lies its problem: it is a beautiful but ultimately empty film. It looks sumptuous, with director of photography Barry Sonnenfeld once again bringing the Coen Brothers’ world to vivid life here, and the score by Carter Burwell lends an extra layer to the production. But there are some serious flaws with the casting. Byrne is very good indeed as Regan, but the overly hammy Finney is horribly miscast as Irish gang boss Leo, lacking the necessary screen presence to be a credible kingpin, while the humour here undermines any real sense of drama needed to make it work. Polito is decent as rival boss Caspar, but since he cuts such a laughable figure physically, he lacks gravitas too.
There is only one scene, where Regan is taken out into the forest to bump off the brother of his current girlfriend Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), Bernie (played by John Turturro), which really works in the film. The scene is beautifully framed and is one of the only moments in the whole movie where the audience really connects with what is happening.
Miller’s Crossing isn’t a bad film by any means and it is an accomplished piece of work. But it lacks narrative focus, and in their attempt to subvert genre, the Coen Brothers fell between two stools here. It fails as a drama, and its moments of humour don’t really work either. Worth watching for Byrne’s masterful performance but recommended with reservations.
JOEL MEADOWS
Miller’s Crossing [1990] [DVD] [1991]
Millers Crossing – Limited Edition Steelbook [Blu-ray]
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