Miller's Crossing

Cold and cut to the bone, the film is a primer in screen virtuosity. Standard action film clichés, like a face getting hit with a chair, get turned inside out; both film and actors somehow manage to seem realistic and stylized at the same time.

A masterpiece, but of a unique kind... A gorgeously filmed, supremely well-acted, intricately written film noir about now. more

Barry Sonnenfeld's stunning cinematography and the sharply etched characterizations make this film one for the ages. more

Substance is here in spades, along with the twisted, brilliantly controlled style on which filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen made a name. more

As disturbing and densely beautiful as its opening image, a lofty forest that dwarfs the gangsters as they laugh over their kill. more

If, however, you're looking for compelling characters, all the lights are blazing here but nobody's at home. more

A very clever, stylish story of friendship, loyalty and betrayal. more

Crossing should be watched not because it's their finest achievement (that's still to come), but because the brothers are keeping things refreshingly different and building a career, their minds still very much fixed on originality. more

What it doesn't have is a narrative magnet to pull us through - a story line that makes us really care what happens, aside from the elegant but mechanical manipulations of the plot. more

It takes place in an artificial world constructed largely from the mythology of other movies, and, though it's both seamless and stylish, some find it a little too self-conscious for its own good. more

The excitement in watching a Coen Brothers film is not wondering what they're going to put their characters through - because duh - but seeing how the characters ultimately fare, and what they've learned or haven't learned by the end of the tale. In that sense, Miller's Crossing is one of their finest movies, sporting a slate of characters that you become legitimately invested in and putting them on fast tracks to places you're not entirely sure of. No one plays their characters with unnatural intelligence, not especially Gabriel Byrne's reckless firebrand Tom. His impulsiveness stands in... more

Gangster movies don't come any finer than this and there are very few done so well about the Irish Mob. I cannot find one aspect of the film that I don't completely love, everything is done to perfection. The Coen Brother's amazing unique style comes in to play within a very believable and traditional crime epic. The story works so well in telling a story about one person as well as a collective. Gabriel Byrne really does an amazing job, not many people could make this character so grounded and natural. The attention to detail and setting is flawless, this should be put up in the ranks... more

I love the Coen Brothers' recreation of period detail. The gangster jargon is so thick at times that I had trouble following the plot at the beginning. I particularly liked Harden's and Turturro's performances. The movie looks handsome as the cinematographer says the Coens wanted it to look. It's about a man looking out only for his own survival amidst his violent world where double and triple crosses are prevalent. more

Miller's Crossing has always been overlooked in my opinion as being one of the best gangster films of all time The scene in the woods with Byrne and Turturro is an absolute classic! It funny how they won the Oscar 16 years after making this film for No Country for old men, they've been making masterpieces for years! more

There are always films in which I find it amazing how long it takes for me to see them. This is one of those. Miller's Crossing is undoubtedly one of the best films put together by the Coen brothers, I would put it right behind films like No Country For Old Men or Fargo. Set in the 1920s, Miller's Crossing is purely a gangster film. The plot is a little difficult to summarize, but it stars the awesome Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects) as a well-estasblished Irish gangster who has a falling out with his boss over a woman. Typical of the Coen brothers, they gather a fabulous cast. From the... more

Verna: What're you chewin' over? Tom Reagan: Dream I had once. I was walkin' in the woods, I don't know why. Wind came up and blew me hat off. Verna: And you chased it, right? You ran and ran, finally caught up to it and you picked it up. But it wasn't a hat anymore and it changed into something else, something wonderful. Tom Reagan: Nah, it stayed a hat and no, I didn't chase it. Nothing more foolish than a man chasin' his hat. A gangster film with plenty of noir elements, set in a city during the prohibition era, done Coen brothers style. There is a lot of style in this movie. The... more