Real Men Love Miller's Crossing

“It’s just a damn ripoff”

In a recent interview with Cormac McCarthy, the Coen Brothers dismissed Miller's Crossing as "just a damn ripoff," to which McCarthy replied, "I understand it's a ripoff; I'm just saying it's good." In a way, they're both right.

On the one hand, the plot of Miller's Crossing is really just a mixture of two Dashiell Hammet novels: The Glass Key and Red Harvest (which was later remade as Yojimbo, which was later remade as A Fistful of Dollars, which was later remade as Last Man Standing). Unlike those novels, however, Miller's Crossing -- and this has been scientifically proven -- doesn't suck balls.

The story follows Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), an advisor to the most powerful crime boss in an unnamed city. After a rival crime lord kinda-sorta declares war on Tom's boss, and after Tom's boss tosses him out on his ass for having sex with his fiancee, Tom starts working for himself. The main question which drives the story doesn't necessarily concern which gang will win, or who will die, but rather what Tom's motivations are: will he try to destroy his old boss out of anger? Is he working totally for himself now, playing both sides against the middle? Or will he remain loyal to his old pal? For a film which could have easily degenerated into a blood-and-bullets gangster opera, Miller's Crossing remains intelligent and character-focused all the way through.

So, yeah, it's a total ripoff, but it's one of the best ripoffs ever made.

The 1930’s via the Coen Brothers

In Roger Ebert's 1990 review of Miller's Crossing, he digresses -- as he tends to do -- for about three friggin' paragraphs about the look of Leo (Albert Finney)'s office. He said:

"What a wonderful room. All steeped in dark shadows, with expensive antique oak furniture and leather chairs and brass fittings and vast spaces of flooring between the yellow pools of light. I would like to work in this room. A man could get something done in this room. And yet the room is a key to why Miller's Crossing is not quite as successful as it should be -- why it seems like a movie that is constantly aware of itself, instead of a movie that gets on with business.

I do not really think that Leo would have such an office."

In other words, Roger Ebert missed the entire fucking point. Miller's Crossing focuses on gorgeous sets, well-crafted dialogue, and beautiful cinematography, all to create a hyper-real version of the 1930's, in roughly the same way the Coens would create an equally beautiful, equally fantastic portrayal of the 1940's in The Hudsucker Proxy a few years later. To expect total realism out of a film like Miller's Crossing is an exercise in round peg, square hole syndrome -- it's not made to be realistic, it's made to be handsome.

And handsome it is, of course: every costume looks meticulously designed, every floor looks like it's just been recently waxed, and every camera move is deliberate and aesthetically pleasing. It's the Coens at their most ostentatious, perhaps, but also at their best.

Steve Buscemi’s cameo

Mink, played by Steve Buscemi, has a rough time in the film. He speaks in only two scenes, and he's only physically present in one. Despite the fact that a significant portion of the plot revolves around him and his relationship to the other characters, he spends his meagre amount of screen time getting bossed around by Tom. Still, Buscemi makes the character memorable enough that he doesn't get lost in the labyrinthine plot; his few lines of dialogue are spoken with such jazzy speed and rhythm underscored with a distinctly neurotic, latently homosexual tone of voice that he sounds simultaneously panicked, excited, and utterly confused about damn near everything going on around him. His last spoken words onscreen are pretty damn indicative of what little time he has in the story (and on the Earth, considering what happens to him later): "How's he gonna find out? You and I ain't even been talkin', Tom! Jesus, Tom! Dammit, Jesus!"

RIP Rug Daniels

The scene where "Rug" Daniels' body is found is probably one of the most darkly hilarious scenes the Coen Brothers ever filmed. There's no music, only the noise of passing cars in the early morning. First, the camera holds on a dog with its head cocked to the side, inquisitively. We then cut to a slightly confused kid, who may very well be one of the oddest looking children I've ever seen in my goddamn life. He looks like he stole his ears off a javelina and superglued them to the the sides of his head. After holding on the kid, we cut to the body of Rug Daniels; shot in the heart, and wearing an offensively obvious wig. The boy quietly, curiously pokes the wig, not quite sure what to make of it. The dog stares intently. Without changing expression, the boy grabs the wig, yanks it off Rug's inert body, and runs off, his prize in tow. 

Not only is the scene oddly funny in its own right, but the effect it has on the main characters is ironically hilarious. Leo assumes that the wig was stolen by Rug's assassin: "They took his hair. Tommy." (Pause.) "Jesus, that's strange." Tom: "Maybe it was Injuns."

Dialogue

Apart from repeated period phrases like "What's the rumpus" ("What's going on?"), "schmatte" ("Jew"), and "square G" ("Good guy,") the Coen Brothers also drop gems like:

"Tell Leo he's not God on the throne, he's just a cheap political boss with more hair tonic than brains."

"All in all not a bad guy -- if looks, brains and personality don't count."

"If you want me to keep my mouth shut, it's gonna cost you some dough. I figure a thousand bucks is reasonable, so I want two."

"If you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?"

"You ain't got a license to kill bookies and today I ain't sellin'. So take your flunky and dangle."

Verna: "Leo's got the right idea. I like him, he's honest and he's got a heart. "
Tom : "Then it's true what they say. Opposites attract. "

The Dane

As Tom is a character who gets what he wants through manipulation and cons, he's gotta have an equally intelligent nemesis. In this case, he comes in the form of The Dane (J.E. Freeman), a sarcastic, mean sonofabitch who sees through all of Tom's bullshit from the first moment the two meet. He's also got the killing power of a half-dozen men.

When he breaks into Verna's dressing room about halfway through the movie, two of her bodyguards attack him. He grabs Verna, whirls, shoots one. The other dodges behind the doorframe. The Dane aims carefully and shoots through the goddamn wall, hitting the guy dead in the chest and killing him. Just so you know, that's something Jack Bauer did in the third season of 24 -- the Dane was such a badass in 1990 that he was doing Jack Bauer shit before Jack Bauer was cool.

Danny Boy

The scene where Leo dispatches roughly a half-dozen of his would-be assassins is operatic and pretty damned over-the-top, but goddamn if it isn't one of the most singularly entertaining scenes in the history of movies.

Sam Raimi’s cameo

Yep -- that's Sam Raimi, director of the Spider-Man and Evil Dead trilogies. He can be seen when Tom sends the cops to raid Leo's hangouts; Sam shoots an unarmed, surrendered gangster, laughs about it for a few seconds, and then gets his shit completely wrecked by a machine gun. I've gotta say, he's rocking that stubble.

Miller’s Crossing

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the most iconic scene in the entire film, so here it is. Tom takes Bernie (John Turturro) out into the woods to kill him, and thus prove his loyalty to Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito). As Bernie breaks down and begins to sob like a child, however ("Look into your heart!," he cries), Tom -- for the first time in the entire film -- experiences a crisis of conscience. If he kills Bernie, he loses Verna and possibly a part of his soul; if he lets him live, Leo might go down. 

Everything we know about Tom (which isn't much, admittedly) makes us believe he'll kill Bernie, and yet, he doesn't. He shoots two bullets into the ground and makes Bernie run for his life. At this point in time, the film seems like it has set up a pretty clear cut moral theme: Tom used to be a heartless gangster bastard, but he redeems himself and becomes a good person in his decision to spare Bernie.

Except, uh, not really. There's another forty minutes left in the film...but more on that in a minute. 

Tom don’t need no gun

Perhaps my favorite thing about Tom Reagan as a character is the fact that he never defeats any of his enemies through physical violence. He tricks them, he cheats them, and he turns them against each other, but he never really confronts them with physical violence -- not because that's part of some moral code of his or anything, but mostly because he just knows he'll be able to get more done by using his wits over a gat. Tom's problem-solving attitude, then, makes the final confrontation between his enemies all the more satisfying; rather than taking out both Bernie (who, after having his life saved by Tom, blackmails him for money and cooperation) and Caspar individually, Tom pits them against one another so one will kill the other, or, best case scenario, they'll take each other out. 

After sending both characters up to his office and hearing shots, Tom walks up the stairs and sees the above: Johnny Caspar, shot to death by Bernie. Bernie's all smiles; he's just killed the one guy who wanted him dead, so Tom and he are now totally square. They can forgive each other for their past wrongs, and Tom can get with Verna, and they can all live happily ever after.

Oh, except for this one thing:

“What heart?”

Tom Reagan is tired of Bernie's shit. He's got literally no logical reason to kill him -- the cops don't really need anyone to pin Caspar's murder on, as Leo will be in charge of the police force -- but he kills Bernie simply because he's pissed off that Bernie made him look like an asshole. All that sappy bullshit the audience was meant to feel when Tom spared Bernie's life is tossed out the window in one brilliantly violent, depressing moment; Tom's mercy is actually viewed as a mistake in hindsight, as if his sudden and ruthless decision to blow the unarmed Bernie's brains out is somehow the right thing to do.

And oddly enough, it is, according to Tom's philosophy; don't let anyone know what you're thinking, don't make a fool of yourself, don't chase your hat. Miller's Crossing isn't a film of easy moral answers -- it's simply about violent men in a violent world, behaving violently according to their own varied (and often nonexistent) codes of morality and honor. In a typical film, there's no way the hero would kill an unarmed man in cold blood, especially when such a murder would have no impact on the plot. As Miller's Crossing obviously isn't a typical Hollywood film, however, it respects the audience enough to show them something as brutal and uncompromising as Bernie's murder without trying to paint some sort of moral lesson with it.

The hat motif

Tom's hat, when taken as a symbol, informs pretty much all of his actions throughout the entire film. He has a dream where his hat blows off in a forest, but he refuses to run after it because there's "nothing more foolish than a man chasin' his hat" -- in other words, there's no sense in showing too much emotion or chasing after something, even if you want it, for fear of looking stupid or desperate. In the final scene of the film, he refuses to apologize to Leo and watches him walk into the distance -- yet he still stares at his disappearing figure from under the brim of his hat, refusing to chase after him.

It's a pretty obvious motif, but it says a hell of a lot about Tom and his stoic-to-a-fault personality. Whether you agree with Tom's decisions or not, you understand them and, to a degree, you respect them -- that is the sign of a film with great characterization. 

And real men love films with great characterization.