Critics reviews

Here are the good things about Miller's Crossing: It's gorgeous; Carter Burwell's score is among his best; John Turturro's performance as a pleading, pathetic, backstabbing bookie is an all-timer; as is Albert Finney's turn as a Prohibition-era Irish mob boss. But there's something strangely missing, too: Maybe it's that Gabriel Byrne's hero, a two-timing enforcer with a weird idea of loyalty, is at times too passive and poker-faced to keep us engaged.

One of the Coens' most deeply personal films? Carter Burwell's plaintive score and Barry Sonnenfeld's velvety cinematography suggest all the tragic pathos Tom himself is unable and/or unwilling to articulate.

Arguably, Miller's Crossing is precisely about Leo's revelation to Tom of his intentions to marry Verna, for it is this incident which precedes and then instigates the events which follow; events which culminate with a bonding so substantial between Leo and Tom that it must eventually become untenable.

The Coen brothers' third feature is dense, paradoxical, unusually strong in both sensuousness and intellection, with striking shifts between expressionism and impressionism. It recalls various other films in many of its details but is organically distinct from all of them, and its creative amplitude is far superior to its contemporaries. Its meaning is occluded, its values problematical, and there is no "safe place" for the audience to resolve them.

Self-conscious and show-offy, the film shows some progress over the Coens' earlier efforts—if only because of the allure and energy of the cast. Yet it never fully convinces in terms of either period or plot.