Kendra 2008-05-06

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

This is not a great movie.

I watched Blood Simple for the first time a few weeks ago and really enjoyed watching Francis McDermott. She was fantastic in Fargo. Fargo was a great movie with all the right moves, excellent tone, bizarre characters, and a flatly affected but very strong pregnant cop played by McDermott. The Coen brothers are known for their slightly off-kilter films. Raising Arizona with Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter was a very successful and entertaining quirky movie. Strange characters and bizarre situations can be very entertaining. The formula just doesn't work in Miller's Crossing.

Gabriel Byrne stars as a dirtball gangster. He's the slimey no. 2 to Albert Finney in Finney's massive gangster world. Finney is the real power in this mystery city and Byrne's authority and power comes from only the fact that he has Finney's confidence. Finney is the star of the movie for me. In this unnamed city, the mayor and the police chief are in his pocket until his rival "goes to war" with his gang and starts to get the upper hand. Byrne is having a "liaison" with Albert Finney's galpal played ably by Marcia Gay Harden. Byrne is Finney's second in command, so his choice of girlfriend is highly questionable. Over the course of the convoluted plot and where dirtbags of all stripes show up and do their thing, Byrne is forced to kill a man to show his new pals that he is not a mole or traitor. Well, Byrne has a little itty bitty heart and lets the pathetic victim go so long as he disappears from town. The intended victim is his girlfriend's brother so it makes sense not to whack him.

Byrne makes his way between the two warring gangs all the while trying to get some money to pay off his gambling debts. It's all really quite silly and meaningless. There are lots of false deep moments with characters pretending to have souls and more than one layer to their shallow characters but they can't quite pull it off. This is a movie populated with characters who are all essentially the same, completely corrupt-- with little or no ethics or care for anybody else but themselves.

The main problem with quirky films is that they so often end badly. What I mean is that the filmmakers don't quite know how to conclude the story or they purposefully leave the ending obscure just so they can retain their "quirky" reputations.

Why is it seen as something of a failure in modern hollywood films to properly conclude a story? At one time, this was considered the mark of a well-constructed story-- one that has a beginning, middle, and end. Some "artists" apparently find the concept unfulfilling and perhaps even a bit constricting-- well, I want a proper ending to my stories! Why should the audience have to make up their own endings? It's just lazy story-telling disquised as avant-garde "art".

The ending in this movie was completely frustrating. Nothing was wrapped up for the main characters (except those that got whacked) and what seems like a perfectly reasonable option presented to Byrne at the closing is rejected by him for no apparent reason. Finney's character doesn't quite understand the ending and neither do I. But Byrne is apparently motivated by other character traits that unfortunately nobody in the audience knows anything about.

Folks in this movie don't learn alot, and don't change alot. It's just another "slice of life" in this particular weird, bizarro Coen brothers world.

The film is beautiful to watch with lush dark colors everywhere. Everybody is wan and pale and even the scenery is washed out. The direction is excellent and the pacing fine. The performances are all adequate or better, but it's just not enough. The dialogue is stilted and terse. Albert Finney owns this movie and so does Marcia Gay Harden.

Essentially, this approach to filmmaking and story telling is a treat for the filmmakers but a frustration for the audience. At the end of the movie I want to know what happens next, I want the storyline concluded, and I don't want to waste my time guessing and speculating about what happens to the characters after the credits because I really just don't care enough about the film or the shallow one or two dimensional characters to waste my time on the exercise.

Book Worm 2008-03-19

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

This is an entertaining film. The Irish vs Italian gangster storyline gives a nice twist and there is also much more to the storyline than the usual mobster type movie.

The humanity shown by the Gabriel Byrne character is refreshing & the sniveling brother makes your toes curl.

It is quite honestly one of the few films in my collection that I go back to willingly again and again.

Jonathan James Romley 2008-02-29

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

As Blood Simple and Raising Arizona had previously done with the respective genre of film-noir and the screwball comedy, Miller's Crossing attempts to do with the American gangster film. Here, the Coen's aren't simply attempting to pastiche the style of Hollywood mob films of the 30's and 40's, but rather, create a customized deconstruction of every single narrative contrivance or characteristic prevalent in those films. Naturally, in keeping with the film's they'd made before (and those that they would go on to create throughout the subsequent decade) the various signs, themes and signifiers have been dusted off, stripped away and re-adapted with an equal amount of warm nostalgia and distancing post-modern irony, and then, finally, restructured with those trademark characters and idiosyncrasies that only the Coen brothers can really create.

The style of the film is trapped somewhere between the straight (though perhaps stylised in order to meet the requirement of the genre) reality of Blood Simple, with the over-the-top characters and set-pieces of Raising Arizona. On top of this, we also have the gorgeous noir-like cinematography of Barry Sonnenfeld, which draws on genre films of the 30's as well as more recent gangster pictures like The Godfather and Once Upon A Time in America (to quote the two most-obvious reference points). It also seems to predate the slick, "handsome" style of a film like Road To Perdition, with both films sharing that same colour-scheme of muted browns and autumnal reds, as well as the use of dramatic lighting, which here seems a little more "expressionistic" than most other mob/noir films of the last few decades. As well as the gorgeous style of both the cinematography and production design, there's also Carter Burwell's fantastic and evocative theme music (which was used in a long running Caffrey's commercial towards the end of the last decade; see also, The Hudsucker Proxy) and the standout performances from the excellent, ensemble cast.

Like much of the Coen's earlier works, the story, and indeed, the characters, are both wildly over-the-top and the actors seem to be having a great time imitating the Hollywood genre stalwarts of the 30's and 40's. Gabriel Byrne as the laconic Tom is the protagonist, the "man behind the man", who watches over his careless boss Leo, perfectly rendered by a stoic Albert Finney. There's also fine support from seasoned character actors and Coen regulars like J.E Freeman, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi and a career best John Turturro, all of which adds further layers of narrative tension, drama and strokes of broad, darkly comic humour to an already fantastic film.

BoatDrinks 2008-02-29

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

There are plenty of contenders for sure, but Miller's Crossing is the only movie I can think of which is brilliant from start to finish. It's the Coens' best work by an absolute mile, closely followed by the under-rated Barton Fink. Boasting an incredibly smart script, beautiful cinematography, near perfect direction, great set pieces and a gorgeous score by Carter Burwell, it's both deeply serious and highly entertaining at the same time. Also, courtesy of John Turturro, we're treated to one of the most detailed and perfect supporting performances ever put on film. I love it.

E. Goodman 2008-02-26

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Though it is highly unlikely that the Coen brothers will ever make a bad movie, this is a three star effort, to Fargo's five.

Miller's crossing has the odd twist, but is on the whole predictable. However, in the movie's favour is some exellent acting (Albert Finney, Jon Polito, John Tuturro, J E Freeman)some marvellous dialogue (Tuturro's Bernie begging for his life, Polito's Caspar in all of his scenes) and beautiful beautiful shots (the scenes out at the woods of Miller's Crossing for example). The film contains one of the best gangster film scenes ever - when Albert Finney's character (Leo) has his house broken into by a rival boss's henchman. The scene, all machine guns and broken furniture, is set to a rather wonderful version of 'Danny Boy'.

The only slightly suspect acting comes from Gabriel Byrne. He might be imitating the films of the era in his acting style, but somehow it doesn't quite come off.

This is a good film and is worth watching (it even features an uncredited Frances McDormand) but Fargo it ain't.