Miller's Crossing

Joel Coen, directing a screenplay written with Ethan Coen, takes Prohibition-era crime seriously enough to make room for jokes about the people who conduct it. We recommend Miller’s Crossing, with a warning that its complicated plotting can leave the people feeling distant. The talk is sharp, the acting has room to be peculiar, and the images have been composed with care. The Coens want us to enjoy the conventions of a gangster film while noticing how peculiar its codes of behaviour can be.

Albert Finney, as Leo, gives the film a human scale that survives all the cleverness around him. His performance has the weight to make friendship seem worth preserving, even when the writing is busy testing its limits. We laughed at Jon Polito’s Johnny Caspar, because his seriousness makes the gangster manners look faintly ridiculous. Polito gets the joke across without standing outside the film to point it out. Both actors make the dialogue sound like something they have a personal interest in saying.

Barry Sonnenfeld’s cinematography gives the film warm colour and firmly outlined compositions, so the stylisation is apparent without becoming difficult to read. The graceful camera movement stops those compositions from feeling like illustrations held up for inspection. Production designer Dennis Gassner gives the criminal world the carefully arranged appearance that suits this approach. It works because the actors remain interesting enough to keep us from spending the scene inspecting their surroundings.

Michael R. Miller’s editing gives the complicated plotting a welcome degree of clarity. The exchanges have room for the actors’ odd emphases, which helps when the language is this elaborate. Carter Burwell’s music strengthens the mournful mood, allowing some feeling into a film that can otherwise seem preoccupied with finding the next well-turned line. We appreciate that contribution without wishing the music would do more; too much encouragement to sympathise would sit awkwardly beside this dialogue.

The reservation centres on Gabriel Byrne’s Tom Reagan. Byrne’s guarded performance suits a story about uncertain loyalties, but it can leave us waiting for a stronger reason to care about his choices. Marcia Gay Harden’s Verna and John Turturro’s Bernie Bernbaum belong to an ensemble whose distinctiveness makes that distance more noticeable. We can enjoy the company around Tom without finding him quite as compelling as the film needs him to be.

As a gangster film, it is unusually interested in what friendship requires from people whose work makes trust difficult. The Coens’ dialogue gives that question plenty of comic life, and they respect the genre enough to take its concerns seriously. The elaborate language can be enjoyed for its rhythm even when a particular exchange sends us back through the plot in our heads. We would have liked a little less ingenuity, but we would miss these voices in a plainer version.

The caveat is straightforward: this is not a thriller to put on when conversation is likely to compete with it. At 115 minutes, it asks for attention without always making that attention effortless. Give it a quiet evening if elaborate plotting and actors enjoying difficult dialogue are pleasures in themselves.