Review of Miller's Crossing (1990) by Harris A — 01 Nov 2010

Been over ten years since I've seen this. In the interim I got caught up. I saw a lot of movies from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, especially those wonderful gangster movies. Cagney, Bogart, Edward G., and I bunch of others I can't think of right now.

Let me tell ya, it's kind a hard to separate this movie from all those noir-y gangster pics. This may as well have been Gilda or something, some kind of passion-play from the late 30s about the good ol' days.

Talk about a gorgeous lookin' movie, all that attention to set, those details, and those wonderful performances. Albert Finney really delivers something I never noticed twenty years ago when this came out: solid weakness.

And that whole thing between him and Byrne. Nice. And of course Marcia Gay deserved all the accolades, as did Turturro and everyone else. I think at this point I'll watch anything with Polito in it.

This guy is a classic supporting actor. He's the one that brings it all back to that other era, an era where the supporting cast was as interesting, sometimes even more interesting, than the main players.

I went a bit cold on some of the Coen's later works, Serious Man brought me back, Miller's Crossing we love. We loved the music, pace, look of it, dialogue. The dialogue alone is a character, seamlessly a part of everything else.

A big sprawling love-letter to classic film, a masterwork of sorts, near-perfect writing, entertaining, smart. What a classic movie is all about. Am I gushing?