Jon Polito

Johnny Caspar is taking the business of being a gangster seriously in Miller's Crossing (1990), and Polito lets that become funny without pointing it out. We laughed because he sounds personally invested in the dialogue, rather than pleased with himself for delivering it. Albert Finney's Leo gives the film a similar human weight when the plotting threatens to become too clever. They are a substantial reason we recommend it, with the caveat that keeping track of its complications can sometimes keep us at a distance.

Polito had already had recurring television work in Crime Story (1986–88), but Caspar began his five-film association with Joel and Ethan Coen. The stocky build and raspy voice made him readily cast as a hood or an authority figure. The Coens also wrote Lou Breeze, the sad-faced studio functionary in Barton Fink (1991), specifically for him. We like that film's uncomfortable comedy, though its treatment of the unhappy writer grows repetitive. Casting Polito inside a studio hierarchy rather than a criminal one makes sense: professional standing is something his characters can take painfully seriously.

He was a regular in Homicide: Life on the Street in 1993–94, playing Detective Steve Crosetti. In The Big Lebowski (1998), he was the private investigator Da Fino. These parts sit close to the cops and criminals for which he was regularly cast. That familiarity is a limitation worth acknowledging, even in an actor we enjoy. The question is how much an individual script gives him beyond a recognisable occupation and a voice.

Polito recognised the problem himself, complaining that film-makers who said they had written a role for him had often merely rewritten Miller's Crossing. Caspar's success could make the next offer sound suspiciously like the last. What we value in that performance is the conviction he brings to words that invite an easy caricature. Start with Miller's Crossing if a complicated gangster plot is your idea of an evening off.