Loosely based off of Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key, Miller's Crossing is a 1990 darkly comicneo-noir gangster film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, and J.E. Freeman.Set in 1929 in an unnamed Eastern metropolis , it's the story of Tom Reagan, The Dragon for Irish-American mob boss Liam "Leo" O'Bannon. When Leo falls for Femme Fatale Verna Bernbaum (who happens to also be sleeping with Tom), he ends up protecting her beloved brother Bernie, setting off a mob war - with Tom caught right in the middle.The film is something of a dark horse in the Coen Brothers oeuvre. Despite lacking a massive cult following or any AcademyAwards, it remainds one of the duo's most critically acclaimed pieces.
This film contains examples of:
Anti-Hero: Tom is a Type IV for he is a criminal and a deadbeat gambler who sleeps with his boss's girlfriend and backstabs his way through the film. However, he really does care for both Leo and Verna. All his plotting is for their benefit.
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: The Dane. He is more or less the strongest and most feared enforcer in the city, he wields a Cool Webley Mk VI and he absolutely beats the living manshit out of a professional prizefighter.
Note that the main protagonist, Tom, is a rather comical subversion. He repeatedly gets his ass kicked, and only commits one act of violence that actually accomplishes anything.
Bad Ass Grandpa: Leo. "The old man's still an artist with a Thompson."
Also Tic-Tac. Moments after Tom has hit a Giant Mook across the face with a chair, Tic Tac strides into the room and without pausing snatches the chair from Tom's hands, whereupon he and the Giant Mook inflict a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Tom.
Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Tom (played by the 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.
Boom, Headshot: The Mafia frequently mentions shooting a person "in the brain" and it is how Mink, Bernie, and the Dane all die.
Bottomless Magazines: Leo fires a few thousand rounds from a Tommy gun without reloading.
Brother-Sister Incest: Bernie claims that Verna once tried to "cure" Bernie's homosexuality herself, though his word is less than trustworthy.
Bury Your Gays: Bernie, the Dane, and Mink are all dead before the credits roll, although they're not the only casualties.
The Cameo: In addition to the Sam Raimi example below, frequent Coens collaborator (and wife of Joel) Frances McDormand appears as the Mayor's secretary.
Catch Phrase: Tom's "I'll think about it", which he says whenever he has no intention of doing what's been asked of him. Casper is smart enough to realise this, and so has his thugs beat Tom up when he tries the line on him.
Chewing the Scenery: Jon Polito (Johnny Caspar) and John Turturro (Bernie Bernbaum) must have been picking scenery out of their teeth for weeks.
Femme Fatale: Verna, subverted. While plenty of people die because of her, she's not directly responsible for any of them, even the one Tom blamed her for. She's the only person in the movie who genuinely doesn't want anyone to die, but her affair with Tom and her love for her brother get everyone else killed. She's a Femme Fatale despite her best efforts.
Actually, this one is kind of double-subverted, in that the character who plays the Femme Fatale character type much more closely is not even a woman...it's Verna's brother, Bernie (maybe an alternate definition for "femme")
Foe Yay: Eddie Dane towards Tom Reagan. Actually, pretty much all of the sexual tension in the movie qualifies as Foe Yay due to the fact that almost everyone in the movie is pitted against everyone else.
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.
Also when Tom hits the Giant Mook who's about to beat him up across the face with a chair, the latter says plaintively "Jesus, Tom!" like his feelings rather than his face have been hurt.
Idiot Ball: Frankie and Tic-Tac are given orders to make sure Tom kills Bernie. So what do they do? They stand by the car and wait while Tom walks Bernie into the woods. Alone. This is later lampshaded by the Dane, who beats them both up for being stupid and goes to check for a body.
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 kills his boyfriend to cover his own death. The king of it all, though, is 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.
Caspar: "Just like I tell all my boys...ALWAYS PUT ONE IN THE BRAAAAAAIIIINN!"
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.
Mood Whiplash: After the mostly comedic first half, the eponymous "Miller's Crossing" scene is pretty jarring.
More Dakka: During the siege of a Bad Guy Bar, dozens of cops and mobster all fire their pistols at the club and one of them even unveils a water-cooled Browning M1917 machine gun. Also Leo unloading his Thompson.
Playing Both Sides : Tom schemes all the time to pull this off. Very similar or almost identical themes are seen in Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars since all these films are based on Dashiel Hammet works.
Tom Reagan's name references Tom Hagen from The Godfather and Sean Regan from The Big Sleep.
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.
Shovel Strike: Johnny Casper viciously does this to the Dane when he is manipulatied into thinking that the Dane is a traitor.
Tap on the Head: Averted. When Tom is kicked in the head by one of Caspar's goons, the cop who wakes him up informs him that he's only been out for ten seconds or so.
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 killing Bernie). The rest of the time he's getting his ass kicked left and right — often by design.
Zero Approval Gambit: Tom deliberately alienates himself from Leo (and takes quite a few beatings in the process) in order to eliminate his competition while simultaneously providing himself an exit from his life of crime.
Loosely based off of Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key, Miller's Crossing is a 1990 darkly comic neo-noir gangster film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, and J.E. Freeman.Set in 1929 in an unnamed Eastern metropolis , it's the story of Tom Reagan, The Dragon for Irish-American mob boss Liam "Leo" O'Bannon. When Leo falls for Femme Fatale Verna Bernbaum (who happens to also be sleeping with Tom), he ends up protecting her beloved brother Bernie, setting off a mob war - with Tom caught right in the middle.The film is something of a dark horse in the Coen Brothers oeuvre. Despite lacking a massive cult following or any Academy Awards, it remainds one of the duo's most critically acclaimed pieces.
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