Millers Crossing

"Miller's Crossing" is the Coen Brothers' masterpiece. Joel and Ethan Coen stormed onto the movie scene with a low budget movie called "Blood Simple". It has no major stars and only had enough money for a few songs, so Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer" gets played throughout the movie. It becomes a running gag; walk into a room and "I'm a Believer" is playing. A song is selected on a jukebox and that is the song. The ending credits roll, you hear it again.The most distinctive element to the film is the frantic camera movement. This was cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld's breakout movie. He went on to collaborate with the Coen Brothers again on "Raising Arizona" and "Miller's Crossing" before becoming a blockbuster movie director. In "Blood Simple", the camera flies and swoops, and magically goes through windows. Unfortunately, this effect distracts from the movie itself.

A key scene which happens early on is when the husband (Marty) is talking to his wife's lover (Ray). He warns Ray to watch out for his wife, because she will lie to him someday. "She will look up at you with her blue eyes and say "What's the matter, Ray, I ain't done anything funny'". Unwittingly, Marty caused doubt in Ray's mind that leads to a rift between the new couple. This element is essential because the movie borders on the "Idiot plot".

On the whole, "Blood Simple" has many interesting elements but the gruesome final scene that was straight out of a "Halloween" movie turned me off. "Miller's Crossing" is a much more polished film. The camera work was more integrated into the story, which flowed much better. They also avoided the "Idiot Plot" this time around.

Roger Ebert coined the term "Idiot Plot" as "a succession of events so unlikely that it would require characters to be implausibly stupid for it to play out the way it does". If anyone had half a brain and spoke up, the movie would be over. What was once a device used only for low budget horror movies ("DON'T RUN INTO THE WOODS NAKED, YOU IDIOT") is unfortunately now used as a staple for suspense in big budget movies.

Far too many movies are guilty of the "Idiot Plot", from Ebert's darling "The Deep End" to the Sam Rami thriller "A Simple Plan". It's even worse when the movie is a star vehicle. The whole thing ends up like a Colombo episode. Columbo is known for crime stories where it doesn't matter how carefully thought out or planned the crime is. Colombo always solves it with an intuition that could have only been gained by reading ahead in the script.

The Coen Brothers' movie "Fargo" has both of these weaknesses: A movie full of idiots, with the wife of the director (Frances McDormand) as Columbo. It is so obvious she is going to win and the fight is so one sided, it becomes cartoon-like. Nobody else in the movie, except for McDormand, is afforded any dignity. Even her character's husband comes off as a lazy bum. Furthermore, the cinematography is really dull and ugly except when McDormand is on screen where she dazzles because she is shot through heavy filters.

William H. Macy, who plays the main criminal, is not left with much to work with. His character is a pitiable bug of a man whom you want to squash to put him out of his misery. This character is even worse than the characters played by the virtuoso of pitiable characters: Emil Jannings. At least Jannings' characters in "The Blue Angel" or "The Last Laugh" had some dignity in the beginning.

The two other main characters who are not given any smarts nor dignity are the two killers played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare. The killers are the R2D2 and C3PO of the movie. They are there purely for comic relief. Lucas always credits Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" (1958) as inspiration for his characters, but there are similar characters in the earlier movies: "Caine Mutiny"(1954) and "Stalag 17"(1953). Unfortunately, the Coen Brothers completely underwrote these characters. Buscemi who usually plays smart mouth characters in such movies as "Reservoir Dogs", "Desperado", and "Armageddon" has to play this loser who can't even put two words together. The entire comedy is derived from feeding one of the killers into a woodchipper. This puzzles me because viewers who find this gruesome scene funny also think that "GoodFellas" and "Reservor Dogs" are too violent.

The Coen Brothers like misleading the Press. They hinted that "The Man Who Wasn't There" might have been based on a true story. They pleaded ignorance of Homer's Odyssey when questioned about "O Brother, Where Art Thou?". And they said "Miller's Crossing" was an original idea based on an image of a gangster in the woods. However, it is obvious that "Miller's Crossing" was heavily influenced by Dashiell Hammett's "The Glass Key". The 1942 movie is a classic and catapulted Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake to major stardom. However, the Coens did not remake "The Glass Key". "Miller's Crossing" is more like a variation on a theme. The original plot is twisted, and it is interesting to see how they changed it. The plot of "The Glass Key" is as follows:

"Politician/thug Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy) is used to thinking with his fists; his right hand man Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd) is used to thinking with his head. Both are best friends. Madvig throws his considerable political weight behind gubernatorial candidate Ralph Henry in order to win daughter Janet Henry's (Veronica Lake) affections. Paul also makes an enemy of a former ally, gangster Nick Varna, who has many of Janet's brother Taylor's gambling debts. Janet acts nicely towards Paul so that Paul will support her father but she is more interested in Ed. Ed is also attracted to her but backs off for Paul's sake. Ed and Paul disapprove of Paul's younger sister Opal (Bonita Grainville) dating Taylor (Richard Denning) because Taylor gambles. Outside the Henry home, Ed finds Taylor dead.

Ed and Paul fight over Janet. Ed goes to Nick Varna and implies he will reveal Paul's secrets, then changes his mind. Varna's thugs, Rusty and the sadistic, perverse Jeff (William Bendix), beat Ed savagely. Varna brings in the editor of the Observer newspaper, Matthews, to record Ed's confession of Paul's secrets, but Ed escapes and is hospitalised. In the hospital, Paul claims to Ed that he killed Taylor, but Ed thinks Paul is covering up for the real killer. He tracks Opal to Matthews' country residence and finds Opal, the Matthewses, Nick and his henchmen there. Nick is forcing Matthews to publish Opal's suspicions about Paul murdering Taylor. Matthews' trophy wife kisses Ed and Matthews commits suicide, but not before making his will. Ed destroys the will and gets Paul to get the estate administrator to kill the story about Opal's suspicions.

Ed searches for Nick but is cornered by Jeff. Jeff takes Ed up to his room and hints that Nick had something to do with Taylor's murder. Nick enters, fights with Jeff, and Jeff strangles him to death. Ed leads the police to the Henry residence to arrest the prime suspect--Janet. To save his daughter, Ralph confesses to accidentally killing Taylor after an argument. Paul had helped Ralph move the body. Ed prepares to move to New York. Janet, engaged to Paul, asks Ed to take her away. Paul gives his blessing to the couple but wants Janet's engagement ring back."

[From: http://www.eskimo.com/~noir/ftitles/glassk]

What makes "Miller's Crossing" unique among its contemporaries is that many of the main characters are as smart and tough as the hero, Tom. Here are few examples: He tells the heroine, Verna, that intimidating helpless women is part of his job. She tells him to go find one and intimidate her. She is her own woman and unlike other movie heroines (including Janet in "The Glass Key") she does not chase after Tom, while also distaining all other men. In another example, Tom tells the bartender that he refused to take a monetary handout as the bartender points out Tom's hypocrisy of taking a free drink.

Tom is an ideas Man. He knows all the angles. His forte is knowing how people behave and how to exploit them. He is the man behind the man and works very well in an organization. At one point in the movie, Tom is thrown out and has to act alone. It's at this point of total isolation that a common American hero would pick up a gun and start shooting people. That is completely against Tom's character. In fact, he doesn't even like guns. A pivotal scene forces him to use a gun and he is uncomfortable. Unfortunately for him, everyone else in the movie enjoys using guns. This makes him a total underdog. He has to survive in this world armed only with his brains. This unique hero characterization is why I love this movie.

Review by Keith MacCrimmon