YMMV / Miller's Crossing

• Award Snub: Wasn't remembered at the Academy Awards, ignored in favor of GoodFellas and The Godfather Part III. Granted, GoodFellas deserved the love, but Part III? It was just a rough year to be an epic gangster film.
• Awesome Music: "Danny Boy", which shows up in a scene that doubles as a Moment of Awesome and a Funny Moment while featuring Bottomless Magazines. Carter Burwell's score is also impressive, based on "Lament for Limerick".
• Better on DVD: You'll need multiple viewings to understand the plot completely. The option to watch the film with subtitles also helps a lot, as Viewers Are Goldfish is not in effect here, and the sometimes rapid-fire dialogue and period slang makes it rather easy to miss very crucial information.
• Fandom Rivalry: There are Miller's Crossing fans who don't see Goodfellas as the better film and chafe about how it didn't win any Academy Awards or get the same iconic status as Goodfellas, largely due to being Dueling Movies with Goodfellas and ending up the loser.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Hilarious in production, actually. Miller's Crossing features a venal and corrupt police force. To fit the Prohibition-era setting, a lot of shooting was done in New Orleans... where the crew ran into NOPD officers who eagerly solicited bribes to keep the shoot running smoothly.
• Magnificent Bastard: Tom Reagan is the right hand man to Leo O'Bannon, an Irish-American mobster, but it's clear who has the brains in the operation. Tom is a duplicitous alcoholic who's sleeping with Leo's fiancee and spends the movie double-crossing everyone he meets, regardless of the damage Tom suffers in the process. Then, at the end, it turns out the whole movie was a Zero-Approval Gambit on Tom's part. Everything he did, he did for Leo in the most unscrupulous way possible. He manipulates Leo's enemies into killing each other, having Leo's greatest rival murder his own terrifying enforcer Eddie Dane when Dane is distracted before leading said rival to his own death. Tom then personally murders his devious former friend, the smug Bernie Birnbaum to ensure Leo remains firmly in power.
• One-Scene Wonder: Steve Buscemi as Mink.
• Retroactive Recognition: Michael Badalucco as Caspar's driver.
• Signature Scene: The execution scene in an autumnal forest, so much so it was used for the poster and VHS covers.
• Tear Jerker: Bernie's desperate pleading when faced with execution at Tom's hands. It's not hard to understand why Tom decides to spare his life and let him go, nor to understand why Tom is not nearly so forgiving the next time, after Bernie takes advantage of that initial mercy to blackmail him.
• Vindicated by History: While it wasn't particularly successful when it was first released, Time magazine in 2005 chose Miller's Crossing as one of the 100 greatest movies ever made since the inception of the periodical.

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