Look into your heart…that’s the advice that Bernie (played by John Turturro) pleads his executioner (Gabriel Byrne) to heed, in the deep fog-laden woods of Miller’s Crossing. The heart-stopping scene in which the whole film revolves around is more or less alluded to as each of the film’s central players all at one point or another are forced to look inward into their own hearts and battle the blackness that stares back. Unfortunately, at Miller’s Crossing, the blackness wins out most of the time.
The Coens have quite an affinity for genre. This may come as no surprise seeing as how most of their films are a “smash-up” of many well-known genres, with a Coen brothers’ twist that allows them to follow the rules for a little while, only to break them by picture’s end. Miller’s Crossing is a sleek, and handsome film noir drama that captures the icy haze of 30’s gangster pictures. It’s a gangster picture however that relies more on substance and it’s wormy characters than actual “whacks” and shoot-outs. It’s a stylized world that the Coens’ pull us into it, but it’s one that as Caspar says, raises age-old questions of ethics.
Tom Regan (Byrnne) plays advisor to a Prohibition-era crime boss played by Albert Finney. When Tom gets caught up in the crossfire between neighboring crime rings, his loyalties quickly become divided. His relationship with the boss’ dame (Marcia Gay Harden) makes the situation all the more sticky when the double, triple crosses, and back-stabs begin to pile up. The film is beautifully photographed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who shot the first three Coen brothers pictures. His work here is much more subdued than it is on Blood Simple, and Raising Arizona, and it’s probably for the better. The narrower scope of the lenses, the light shading all of the brimmed-hat gangsters at one point or another don’t allow us a full glimpse into the souls of these men until we realize too late what their true motives are. The techniques work without forcing us to think a certain way, because after all, nothing is what it seems at Miller’s Crossing.
4/5
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