ANYONE WHO KNOWS THE MOB HAS BEEN TO "MILLER’S CROSSING"

Put your hands on your hearts… Admit it. You like a good old-fashioned gangster movie. I don’t mean the new-fangled genre, you know, gang wars, drugs and shootouts, that kind of jazz. No, I mean the old-fashioned ones. About wise guys. I mean films like the Godfather(s) (naturally) and Goodfellas in the U.S. , films like Borsalino and C.O. (starring Alain Delon in case you’re interested) from France. The ‘40s. Wise guys with automatic weapons and slick hats rule the streets. Heck, sometimes they even rule the town. The wit, the power, the danger the adventure… All from the security of your own living room… Miller’s Crossing is one of the best examples of the genre, oh yes and by far. This oeuvre bares the signature of one of my favorite directing / producing duo the Coen brothers and is guaranteed to take you on a bumpy ride, back to the times when wise guys ruled the streets, and you could almost smell the danger in the air…
Leo is the “big guy” in town. He basically runs everything with his moody and cool-as-ice right hand man Tom (played by the charismatic Gabriel Bryne). Things go pretty smoothly as a rule but soon a problem emerges. Leo is the big guy in town but he is by no means the only major player. Johnny Caspar, along with his own right hand man Eddie Dane, is determined to get a piece of the action. And Leo’s refusal to compromise on what we shall for the present call a “minor point” will push the town to the brink of gang warfare. Tom pleads with Leo to be reasonable, but Leo cannot be budged. Plus there is another problem. Tom and Leo have found themselves on either corner of a love triangle – an occurrence that doesn’t best please boss Leo who is both used and determined to get his own way. Which leaves Tom in quite a lot of trouble no matter which way you cut it. But, as we said, if one thing Tom knows how to do, it is to keep calm and use his head. And he will need every single ounce of wit he has if he wants to turn this sticky mess around…
There are many different ways of creating suspense. Chases are a good one in this genre, and check a little further down for one of the greatest car chases in film history in Bullit. Another one is by keeping back information. You know, just giving the viewer a tiny drop at a time, one single clue at a time just enough to go the next step and then wait, biting your nails, for what is coming next. In a lot of films, the viewer is “omniscient”, that means that we are kinda “all seeing and all hearing” a lot of the suspense here comes from the “It’s behind you!” effect. Here however, the audience is by far the one who knows the least in the whole mess. Thus we, like Tom, are left with nothing but our own wits to puzzle out what the heck is going to happen next. And the film is ingenious in the balancing act it produces; there are so many really cunning characters (such as our unlikely hero Tom and Verna, a class- A femme fatale played by Marcia Gay Harden) and each one of the characters has woven such a complicated web of intrigues leading to completely opposing goals that you will, I guarantee it, not only be completely unable to unravel the whole thing until the very end (i.e. when Ethan and Joel Coen damn well feel like it) but you will marvel at the engineering of the whole thing. If there was ever a film that pushed you to use your head, here it is. And that makes a brilliant change from the violence-packed movies that are usually thought of as typical of the genre. I also think this makes the film more realistic. Think about it, the times when the wise guys ruled the streets were real. No doubt there. And just as real was the amount of danger, blood and violence. But as in every power struggle, bigger and more effective than going in all guns blazing was the scheming. Be it the really “wise” wise guys like Tom who use their wits to keep themselves and/or the people around them on top, to Verna and her brother Bernie (a character who later became a classic played by John Turturo) who used the inflated egos to chisel a living for themselves. If you think about it that is also what makes the Godfather films great. The “factoring in” of intelligence, Michael Corleone’s careful planning and creating of strategies to get to power and stay there, as opposed to his brother Sonny whose hot-headedness gets him murdered. Oh, this is a classy little number no doubt about it. Watch out for a couple of cinematographically rather brilliant scenes too – especially on the attack on Leo’s house, my personal favorite – you’ll know the one I mean if you watch the film… =)