Review of Miller's Crossing (1990) by Drew S — 07 Sep 2010

The excitement in watching a Coen Brothers film is not wondering what they're going to put their characters through - because duh - but seeing how the characters ultimately fare, and what they've learned or haven't learned by the end of the tale. In that sense, Miller's Crossing is one of their finest movies, sporting a slate of characters that you become legitimately invested in and putting them on fast tracks to places you're not entirely sure of. No one plays their characters with unnatural intelligence, not especially Gabriel Byrne's reckless firebrand Tom. His impulsiveness stands in pleasant contradiction with the rollicking adventure the Coens have planned for him. Its strength lies in its unpredictability, which initially is a bit of a thorny patch for the movie, because the plot can be very difficult to follow. It's baffling and convoluted, a considerable aping of 40s noir, but just like its progenitors it dumps you into an intimidating amount of backstory and some already-established character relationships that can take a while to parse. It reminded me of Michael Clayton, in that you spend most of the movie catching up to what's happening, but once you finally unravel it you feel really accomplished. If there's one thing I like in a movie, it's a little bit of struggle, and the Coens are no strangers to making an audience work for their appreciation.

The risk you always run with such a dense narrative is that your viewers, when all is said and done, probably won't remember the gist of what actually happens a month later. Plot-heavy exchanges in Miller's Crossing aren't always visually engaging, but the movie's most memorable scenes are sumptuous and unforgettable. The piece de resistance is Albert Finney's flaming mansion shootout, obviously, but there are tons of great moments sprinkled through the course of its two hours. If there's one thing you can say about this Prohibition-era opera, it's that it remains eventful, right down to the final few minutes. It's very much a movie that's less than the sum of its parts, but what great parts.