Miller's Crossing: Difference between revisions

Loosely based off of [[Dashiell Hammett]]'s ''The Glass Key'', ''Miller's Crossing'' is a 1990 [[Black Comedy|darkly comic]] [[Film Noir|neo-noir]] gangster film directed by [[The Coen Brothers|Joel and Ethan Coen]] and starring Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, and J.E. Freeman.

 

 

The film is something of a dark horse in the Coen Brothers oeuvre. Despite lacking a [[The Big Lebowski|massive cult following]] or any [[No Country for Old Men|Academy]] [[Fargo|Awards]], it remainds one of the duo's most critically acclaimed pieces.

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* [[The Alcoholic]]: Tom

* [[All Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks|Affably Evil Loan Sharks]]: Lazarre, whose stooges feel free to rough up the right-hand man of the city boss, but only a little bit, and not breaking anything. They know Tom personally, they're sorry about doing what needs to be done, and advise Tom to stop borrowing so much when he's already in debt.

* [[Badass Grandpa]]: Leo. "The old man's still an artist with a Thompson."

** Having [[Bottomless Magazines]] also helps. It takes about a 5 seconds of continous fire to empty a Thompson machine gun, but it's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAnD9P4ummA such an awesome scene] that [[Rule of Cool]] may very well triumph over realism.

* [[Batman Gambit]]: Tom is a master at this.

* [[Beauty Is Never Tarnished]]: Tom (played by the [[Mr. Fanservice|Gabriel Byrne]]) is a rare male example of this trope - no matter how many beatings he takes, he never gets anything worse than a split lip.

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: {{spoiler|Tom succeeds in killing Leo's rivals, but winds up alienated from both Leo and Verna, who enter into a foolish marriage}}.

* [[Black Comedy]]

* [[Bottomless Magazines]]: Leo fires a few ''thousand'' rounds from a Tommy gun without reloading.

* [[Bury Your Gays]]: {{spoiler|Bernie, the Dane, and Mink are all dead before the credits roll, although they're not the only casualties.}}

* [[The Cameo]]:

* [[Couldn't Find a Lighter]]: Leo re-lights his cigar off a smoking tommygun after killing the would-be assassins who brought it.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Tom and Verna, who engage in some classic noir reparte. Also Eddie, [[Hypocritical Humor|who doesn't seem to like when others does it]].

* [[Delusions of Eloquence]]: Johnny Caspar talks like this a lot.

* {{spoiler|[[Did Not Get the Girl]]: Tom}}

* [[Dirty Coward]]: Bernie Bernbaum

* [[The Dragon]]: Eddie Dane, to Johnny Caspar.

* [[Dreaming of Things to Come]]

* [[Fake American]]: Englishman Albert Finney plays the Irish-American Liam "Leo" O'Bannon.

* [[Faking the Dead]]

* [[Guile Hero]]: Well, anti-hero at any rate. Tom may be brilliant, but he doesn't have much choice -- he's a lousy fighter.

* [[Guns Akimbo]]: [[Sam Raimi]] in a cameo.

* [[Ho Yay]]: Tons on it. Notably, a lot of Tom and Leo's dialogue makes them sound like a couple, and the Tom/Verna/Leo [[Love Triangle]] is arguably more about Tom and Verna competing for Leo's attention than Tom and Leo competing for Verna's. And then there's Bernie/Mink and Eddie Dane/Mink, but those are more text than [[Subtext]].

* [[Hypocritical Humor]]: The local police chief affably chats up Tom both times. Once when his cops are helping the Irish mob take out members of the Italians, and again when the power shifts to the Italians and the cops take out the Irish mob instead.

* [[Kick the Dog]]: The movie's full of them. Leo delights in screwing with Johnny just because he can (he claims it's to protect Verna, but the sheer joy in his voice after says otherwise). Bernie does it when he {{spoiler|kills his boyfriend to cover his own death.}} The king of it all, though, is {{spoiler|Tom, when he kills Bernie. At that point, Leo's solidly in power once more, and both Tom and Bernie are safe, and Bernie no longer represents any threat to Tom. Even the death of Johnny Caspar right outside Tom's apartment is meaningless, since Leo can take care of the police. Tom's previously shown not to hold grudges with his bookie's muscle, and kills Bernie without a hint of passion, so it's not revenge. Tom kills Bernie simply because he doesn't like the little weasel. Of course, this backfires for him, unless he'd made peace with the fact he wasn't going to end up with Verna, because it's obvious at the end that she ''knows''.}}

* [[Large Ham]]: Johnny Caspar.

* [[Life Imitates Art]]: The Coens found it first hilarious, then infuriating, that while filming this movie full of police corruption they were repeatedly hit up for bribes by New Orleans Police Department officers.

* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]

* [[Motor Mouth]]: Mink

* [[Nice Hat]]: The entire cast, to the point of being a reoccuring motif.

* [[Phrase Catcher]]: "Jesus, Tom!"

* [[Psycho for Hire]]: Eddie Dane ''really'' enjoys his job.

* [[Retired Badass]]: Leo makes mincemeat out of a squad of hitmen, and still packs a mean right cross for an old guy.

* [[Scenery Porn]]: Inevitable, since it's a Coen Brothers film.

* [[Screams Like a Little Girl]]: Bernie again. It's surprising he wasn't shot for it.

** A newspaper headline seen briefly reads "Seven Dead in Hotel Fire". This is a reference to ''[[Barton Fink]]'', which was released a year later than ''Miller's Crossing'' but written at the same time. Also, Tom's apartment is at the 'Barton Arms'.

** The opening scene is also something of a parodic parallel to the opening of the original ''Godfather'', where an Italian man gives a monologue to a mob boss, requesting a murder.

** More generally, Carter Burwell's delicate and emotional score contrasts sharply with the dark and cynical tone of the film.

* [[Stuffed Into the Fridge]]: {{spoiler|Bernie's murder of Mink. Needless to say, Eddie Dane is very unhappy about this.}}

* [[The Roaring Twenties]]

* [[They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste]]: Some suspect the instances of tropes such as the aforementioned [[Beauty Is Never Tarnished]] are intentional throwbacks to the style and tropes of classic gangster flicks.

* [[Very Punchable Man]]: Tom is a rare (maybe unique) ''main character'' variant. He commits two overt acts of violence in the movie (hitting a [[Mook]] with a chair and {{spoiler|killing Bernie}}). The rest of the time he's getting his ass kicked left and right -- often by [[Magnificent Bastard|design]].

* [[Vomit Indiscretion Shot]]

* [[Wild Card]]: Tom

* [[Xanatos Speed Chess]]: Though implied to be a [[Xanatos Roulette]]. [[Alternate Character Interpretation|We can't know for sure, though]].

* [[Your Cheating Heart]]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:The Coen Brothers]]

[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]

[[Category:Film]]