Miller's Crossing

This article is about the film. For the TV episode, see Miller's Crossing (Stargate Atlantis).

Miller's Crossing
File:Millerscrossingposter.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Joel Coen
Produced by	Ethan Coen
Written by	Joel Coen Ethan Coen
Starring	Gabriel Byrne Marcia Gay Harden John Turturro Jon Polito J. E. Freeman Albert Finney
Music by	Carter Burwell
Cinematography	Barry Sonnenfeld
Edited by	Michael R. Miller
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	September 21, 1990 (1990-09-21) (New York Film Festival) September 22, 1990 (1990-09-22) (United States)
Running time	115 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10–14 million
Box office	$5 million

Miller's Crossing is a 1990 American neo-noir gangster film written, directed and produced by the Coen brothers and starring Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, J. E. Freeman, and Albert Finney. The plot concerns a power struggle between two rival gangs and how the protagonist, Tom Reagan (Byrne), plays both sides against each other.

In 2005, Time chose Miller's Crossing as one of the 100 greatest films made since the inception of the periodical. Time critic Richard Corliss called it a "noir with a touch so light, the film seems to float on the breeze like the frisbee of a fedora sailing through the forest".

Plot

Tom Reagan is the right-hand man for Irish mobster Leo O'Bannon, a political boss who runs a U.S. city during Prohibition. Leo's ascendant rival, the Italian gangster Johnny Caspar, announces his intent to kill bookie Bernie Bernbaum, whom he suspects of profiting off of his match fixing scheme. Leo is seeing Bernie’s sister, Verna, so he extends protection to Bernie, setting off Caspar to vow revenge.

Leo will not be swayed as Tom presses him to give up Bernie in order to avoid a war with Caspar. Tom tries to convince Leo that Verna is playing him to protect her brother. When the war heats up with an assassination attempt on Leo, Tom emphasizes Verna’s disloyalty by revealing to Leo that she has been sleeping with him behind Leo’s back. Leo publicly beats Tom and cuts ties with both of them.

Cast out and needing work, Tom approaches Caspar, who commands him to prove his loyalty by killing Bernie in the woods at Miller's Crossing. As Bernie is led to his execution, he pleads to Tom for his life, saying "Look in your heart". Tom fires his gun into the ground to fake the killing for the sake of Caspar’s henchmen, who are within earshot but cannot see the two men. Tom orders Bernie to run and hide. Caspar’s men fail to check for the body before leaving with Tom.

With Leo weakened, Caspar assumes his position as city boss, controlling the police and using them to destroy Leo's operations.

Within Caspar’s gang, there is tension between Tom and Caspar’s trusted enforcer, the brutal Eddie Dane ("the Dane"). Upon finding that his men didn't actually see Tom kill Bernie, the Dane takes Tom back to Miller's Crossing to verify that Bernie's body is there. Tom expects to find no body and to be executed for it, but instead the group finds a body that had been shot in the face and disfigured beyond recognition by birds, which the Dane and his men assume is that of Bernie’s. Unknown to Tom, Bernie had returned to town and killed the Dane's lover, a man named Mink, and placed the body where his own should have been. Bernie holds this over Tom's head and tries to blackmail Tom into killing Caspar.

With Bernie supposedly dead but actually alive, someone continues to cut into Caspar’s match fix. Tom sows doubt in Caspar’s mind by arguing that the Dane and Mink (who is supposedly alive but actually dead) are the ones betraying him, citing Mink’s sudden disappearance as evidence. Caspar must decide between Tom and the Dane. With Tom in the room he beats the Dane before shooting him in the head.

Tom then engineers a surprise meeting between Bernie and Caspar, knowing that the first one to be seen by the other is likely to be killed. Shortly after the arranged time, Tom arrives to discover that Bernie has killed Caspar. Tom tricks Bernie into surrendering his gun and declares his intent to kill him in retribution for his blackmail. Bernie again begs for mercy, saying, as he did at Miller’s Crossing, "Look in your heart" but this time Tom asks rhetorically "What heart?" and shoots him.

With Caspar and the Dane dead, Leo resumes his post as the only boss in town. On the day Bernie is buried, Verna, having won her way back into Leo's good graces, reacts coldly to Tom and walks back to her car. Leo notifies Tom that Verna has proposed to marry him. He offers Tom his job back but Tom rejects the offer and stays behind, watching Leo as he walks away.

Cast

• Gabriel Byrne as Tom Reagan
• Albert Finney as Liam "Leo" O'Bannon
• John Turturro as Bernie Bernbaum
• Marcia Gay Harden as Verna Bernbaum
• Jon Polito as Johnny Caspar
• J. E. Freeman as Eddie Dane
• Steve Buscemi as Mink Larouie
• John McConnell as Bryan
• Mike Starr as Frankie
• Al Mancini as Tic-Tac
• Olek Krupa as Tad
• Frances McDormand as the Mayor's Secretary

Production

While writing the screenplay, the Coen brothers tentatively titled the film The Bighead—their nickname for Tom Reagan. The first image they conceived was that of a black hat coming to rest in a forest clearing; then, a gust of wind lifts it into the air, sending it flying down an avenue of trees. This image closes the film's opening credit sequence.

Because of the intricate, dense plot, the Coens suffered from writer's block with the script. They stayed with a close friend of theirs at the time, William Preston Robertson in Saint Paul, Minnesota, hoping that a change of scenery might help. After watching Baby Boom one night, they returned to New York City and wrote Barton Fink (in three weeks) before resuming the Miller's Crossing screenplay.

The budget was reported by film industry magazines as around $14 million, but the Coens have said that the film cost "substantially less" than that. According to Paul Coughlin, "The casting of Byrne allows for the psychological assurance, self-confidence and icy demeanour to be physically reproduced in the sturdy and unruffled presence of the tall and lean actor. Tom is 'a man who walks behind a man, whispers in his ear', he is the brains behind Leo's operation, and he is the heartless centre of Miller's Crossing." Although he was a native Irishman playing a lieutenant to an Irish mobster, the Coens did not originally want Gabriel Byrne to use his own accent in the film. Byrne argued that his dialogue was structured in such a way that it was a good fit for his accent and after he tried it, the Coens agreed.

During casting they had envisioned Trey Wilson (who played Nathan Arizona in their previous film Raising Arizona) as gangster boss Leo O'Bannon but two days before principal photography began, Wilson died from a brain hemorrhage and Finney was cast. Roger Westcombe calls Finney's portrayal of Leo "perfectly nuanced in a brilliant performance". Finney also appears in drag in a cameo as an elderly female ladies' room attendant.

The Coens cast family and friends in minor roles. Sam Raimi, director and friend of the Coens, appears as the snickering gunman at the siege of the Sons of Erin social club, while Frances McDormand, Joel Coen's wife, appears as the mayor's secretary. The role of The Swede was written for Peter Stormare but he could not be cast since he was playing Hamlet (a role often referred to as "the Dane"). J. E. Freeman was cast and the name of the character was changed to The Dane, while Stormare went on to be featured in Fargo and The Big Lebowski.

The city in which the story takes place is unidentified but the film was shot in New Orleans as the Coen Brothers were attracted to its look. Ethan Coen commented in an interview, "There are whole neighborhoods here of nothing but 1929 architecture. New Orleans is sort of a depressed city; it hasn't been gentrified. There's a lot of architecture that hasn't been touched, store-front windows that haven't been replaced in the last sixty years." Principal photography ran from January 27 to April 28, 1989.

Influences

Roger Westcombe finds in the opening title sequence of a fedora being blown off its bed of fallen leaves in the forest, a subtle homage to Jean-Pierre Melville's 1963 French crime film Le Doulos, which ends with the gangster protagonist's fate underlined wistfully by the shot of his fedora coming to rest, alone in the frame, in the soil of the forest floor.

Writing in The Atlantic, Christopher Orr sees in the opening scene, in which Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) confronts Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney) and Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) "an obvious nod to the opening of The Godfather".

Miller's Crossing quotes many gangster films and films noir. Many situations, characters and dialogue are derived from the work of Dashiell Hammett, particularly his 1931 novel The Glass Key. There are some parallels between the two stories and many scenes and lines are lifted from this novel. The relationship between Tom and Leo in the film mirrors the relationship between Ned Beaumont and Paul Madvig, the principal characters of the Hammett novel.

Another important Hammett source was his 1929 novel Red Harvest, which details the story of a gang war in a corrupt Prohibition-era American city, a war initiated by the machinations of the main character. While Miller's Crossing follows the plot and main characters of The Glass Key fairly closely, the film has no direct scenes, characters, or dialogue from Red Harvest except for using a fixed boxing fight as a plot device.

Orr also notes, "The ending of Miller’s Crossing makes even clearer reference to the immaculate final scene of The Third Man: a funeral, a protagonist abandoned by his car, who watches as the last person he cares for in the world walks away down a dirt road hemmed by trees".

Reception

Miller's Crossing opened in limited release in New York City on September 22, 1990, after premiering at the New York Film Festival the day before. It was a box-office failure at the time, making slightly more than $5 million, out of its $10–$14 million budget. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 92% based on 63 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Though possibly more notable for its distinctive style than an airtight story, this Coen brothers' take on the classic gangster flick features sharp dialogue, impressive cinematography, and a typically quirky cast of characters." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 76 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

Film critic David Thomson calls the film "a superb, languid fantasia on the theme of the gangster film that repays endless viewing". Of Turturro's performance he says "This could be the finest work of one of our best supporting actors". Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars, stating "It is likely to be most appreciated by movie lovers who will enjoy its resonance with films of the past".

Miller's Crossing won the Critic's Award at the 2nd Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in February 1991. It was nominated for the Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

Frank Moraes says, "Gabriel Byrne does an excellent job in this film, ... this film lives and dies on his performance". Taking particular note of the work of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld and production designer Dennis Gassner, Christopher Orr observed, "Miller's Crossing is an aesthetic pleasure of the highest order on nearly every level".

Time and Total Film placed it in their top 100 list. In 2010, The Guardian called it the 24th best crime movie of all-time.

Soundtrack

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Miller's Crossing
Soundtrack album by Carter Burwell
Released	October 17, 1990
Genre	Film score
Length	28:03
Label	Varèse Sarabande
Coen brothers film soundtracks chronology
Raising Arizona (1987) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Miller's Crossing (1990) Barton Fink (1991)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic

The score was written by Carter Burwell, his third collaboration with the Coen brothers. The main theme is based on the Irish folk ballad "Lament for Limerick". Burwell takes a traditional piece of music with some culturally relevant connection and uses it as the central motif of the broader arrangement. The main theme has been utilized in trailers for a number of other films, including The Shawshank Redemption, as well as in an ad for Caffrey's Irish Ale.

The soundtrack includes jazz tunes, such as "King Porter Stomp", reflective of the era in which the film is set. Other songs include "Danny Boy", sung by Frank Patterson, an Irish tenor, which is heard in Leo's house. Patterson can also be heard singing Jimmy Campbell's "Goodnight Sweetheart" in a scene in the Shenandoah Club.

Track listing

1. "Opening Titles" – 1:53
2. "Caspar Laid Out" – 1:57
3. "A Man and His Hat" – 0:56
4. "King Porter Stomp" (performed by Jelly Roll Morton) – 2:09
5. "The Long Way Around" – 1:39
6. "Miller's Crossing" – 2:35
7. "After Miller's Crossing" – 0:42
8. "Runnin' Wild" (performed by Joe Grey) – 3:06
9. "Rage of the Dane" – 0:05
10. "All a You Whores" – 0:24
11. "Nightmare in the Trophy Room" – 1:37
12. "He Didn't Like His Friends" – 0:24
13. "Danny Boy" (performed by Frank Patterson) – 4:05
14. "What Heart?" – 0:49
15. "End Titles" – 4:44
16. "Goodnight Sweetheart" (performed by Frank Patterson) – 0:54

External links

• Miller's Crossing at IMDb
• Miller's Crossing at AllMovie
• Miller's Crossing at Rotten Tomatoes