Miller's Crossing

Friends is a mental state.  Wuddya say, kid?

Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) doesn't have any friends.  Doesn't really desire any.  He has what you might call a black heart, with the occasional flash of humanity.   He advises an Irish mob boss named Leo (Albert Finney) and carries on with his boss' moll, Verna (Marcia Gay Harden).  Verna has a bookmaking brother named Bernie (John Turturro) who causes trouble and generally pisses off Italian mob boss Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito).  Johnny wants Bernie dead.  Leo seeks to protect Bernie because, you know, he's Verna's brother.

The noir genre always had involved plots, and 1990's MILLER'S CROSSING, the Coen Brothers' third motion picture, tells their serpentine story with considerable verbosity and amazing attention to detail.  The near nonstop witty dialogue, mercifully not peppered with contemporary language, will remind you of Hollywood's Golden Age.  There are some deftly orchestrated, brutal action scenes, one which will make you wonder how Leo doesn't have to stop and reload after being ambushed.  The Coens may tip their hats to the Great Noirs and even THE GODFATHER, but they have created their own universe. A place perhaps where fate metes out justice and has a wry sense of humor.  Also a place that looks like a set designer's dream, and then some.

Cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, before he went off and pretended to be a film director, shoots some beautiful compositions, be it offices with enviable interiors or Miller's Crossing itself, the bleak woods where Bernie pleads for his life.  That image has proven iconic, and was wisely chosen for the film's poster.

Some criticized MILLER'S CROSSING for being all style and no, what? There's plenty of substance in the Coens' script, discernible as you wade through some lengthy, wordy speeches and familiar scenes that rotate things a few degrees to the left. Things I happen to love, by the way.  Yes, Johnny goes on about ethics, but you might form a thesis about what maketh the man.  Friendship? Love? Is that how one survives? Loyalty is fragile, only a misunderstanding away from disintegration.  Might as well be high school.  The Coens paint a bleak portrait of humanity, something that continues in their work twenty five plus years on. It's realism within a patently surreal environment.

Some also criticized this movie for not creating characters you care about.  You may well detest everyone in this picture, but it's clear from the first moments that we are not being cajoled into rooting for anyone. We are being dazzled by the Coens' cinematic wizardry, but also given a morality play in which no one necessarily wears a white hat, at least not all of the time.  Call it pseudo pseudo realism, I suppose.