Miller's Crossing (1990)
Directed by Joel Coen
Set in 1929, a political boss and his advisor have a parting of the ways when they both fall for the same woman.
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What critics say influenced Miller's Crossing
Working with breathtaking flair, director Joel Coen (his brother, Ethan, produces, and the two collaborate on scripts) has captured and heightened the labyrinthine plot twists, the poetically tough dialogue, the fatalism and stark pop beauty that made movies such as The Big Sleep and books like Hammett's The Glass Key such compulsive, whirlpool entertainments.
Miller’s Crossing dreams a beaut, no less so for the fact that Joel and Ethan Coen’s film is a reverent, rigorous reimagining of the world of Dashiell Hammett, especially as limned in The Glass Key and Red Harvest.
The Glass Key and Miller's Crossing represent two distinctive interpretations of Hammett's literature.
Set in an unnamed city during Prohibition, Miller's Crossing opens with a deliberate echo of the opening scene of The Godfather.
The film begins, in an obvious nod to The Godfather, with a character named Caspar (Joe Polito) begging the powerful Leo to do him a favor: in this case, rubbing out an "unethical" bookie named Bennie.
Working with breathtaking flair, director Joel Coen (his brother, Ethan, produces, and the two collaborate on scripts) has captured and heightened the labyrinthine plot twists, the poetically tough dialogue, the fatalism and stark pop beauty that made movies such as The Big Sleep and books like Hammett's The Glass Key such compulsive, whirlpool entertainments.
Yet as Mr. Byrne is not Humphrey Bogart, and Miss Harden is not Lauren Bacall, ''Miller's Crossing'' is not ''The Big Sleep.''
The Coen brothers not only expect their audience to keep track of a byzantine plot, but we are clearly meant to appreciate both the critiques of genre (gangland melodrama, noir thriller, slapstick comedy) and references to specific films (The Godfather, On the Waterfront, even Diabolique in reverse) they plant like cherry bombs all over the picture.
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A chase through a forest evokes the climax of The Conformist, without the genuine horror that made Bertolucci's movie scald.
An attempted murder set to the operatic strains of "Danny Boy" recalls the murder of Sean Connery in The Untouchables.
One of the few legitimate offshoots of David Lynch (its ethereal denouement is undercut by a curlicue similar to the mechanical bird with a worm in its mouth that neutralizes the bucolic epilogue of Lynch's Blue Velvet ), it's also a work of mordant self-flagellation: the Coens evince contempt for not only their profession (the illiterate head of the studio, Lipnick (Michael Lerner, the spitting image of past-his-prime David O. Selznick), dispenses hollow industry maxims ad hoc), but artists, too.
In their first two movies, "Blood Simple" and "Raising Arizona," they executed stylistic leaps and somersaults like young circus tumblers, with nary a thought for falling flat on their faces.
The first two movies made by the Coen brothers, Blood Simple (1984) and Raising Arizona (1987), were elaborate cinematic jungle gyms, fun to climb around on because of how wildly they jutted off from reality.
Joel Coen, who directs their movies, is an NYU film school graduate, and his three movies so far--Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and the new Miller's Crossing--are all deliberately artificial reflections on movie genres.
Written, produced and directed by the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, who also gave us the film noir "Blood Simple" and the zany farce "Raising Arizona," this is a much less original effort in terms of story, yet it is as singular a vision as their other films.
The Coens first came on the film scene with the Hitchcockian ''Blood Simple,'' a hit at the 1984 New York Film Festival, which was followed by their version of madcap comedy, ''Raising Arizona,'' released in 1987.
Closer to the enormous gizmo-ness of Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy than the equally studied but much more inviting Blood Simple , Raising Arizona, and Fargo , this gangster-movie-cum-noir-spoof has enough plot and ambition for four pictures.