Miller's Crossing [VHS]

Arguably the best film by Joel and Ethan Coen, the 1990 Miller's Crossing stars Gabriel Byrne as Tom, a loyal lieutenant of a crime boss named Leo (Albert Finney) who is in a Prohibition-era turf war with his major rival, Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito). A man of principle, Tom nevertheless is romantically involved with Leo's lover (Marcia Gay Harden), whose screwy brother (John Turturro) escapes a hit ordered by Caspar only to become Tom's problem. Making matters worse, Tom has outstanding gambling debts he can't pay, which keeps him in regular touch with a punishing enforcer. With all the energy the Coens put into their films, and all their focused appreciation of genre conventions and rules, and all their efforts to turn their movies into ironic appreciations of archetypes in American fiction, they never got their formula so right as with Miller's Crossing. With its Hammett-like dialogue and Byzantine plot and moral chaos mitigated by one hero's personal code, the film so transcends its self-scrutiny as a retro-crime thriller that it is a deserved classic in its own right. --Tom Keogh

One of the very finest films of the Coen Brothers, Miller’s Crossing is a gangster movie set during the Prohibition era that was first released in 1990. Over two decades later, and with a high definition upgrade it’s no less compelling and better looking than ever before.

Starring Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney and Marcia Gay Harden, the film, based on the hard-boiled detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett, has at its centre a violent power struggle, as a new organisation seeks to assert itself on the reigning crime boss’s territory. Caught between these two forces is Byrne’s Tom Regan, doing his best to stay the right side of the gun barrels.

Behind these great performances, inevitably, the stars of the show are the Coen Brothers, who put together a technically brilliant, lyrically shot gangster movie that one part homage to the golden age of Cagney and Edward G. Robinson and one part devoted to inventive storytelling and ladling on the atmosphere.

In its new Blu-ray guise, the visuals look absolutely glorious and Carter Burwell’s score has never sounded better.

It’s great to see such a brilliantly crafted film as Miller’s Crossing receiving this level of attention, and its high definition upgrade is a very, very welcome one. A must-buy.--Jon Foster

Widely acknowledged as one of the greatest gangster films ever made, Miller’s Crossing is directed from an original screenplay by legendary left-field film-making brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (Intolerable Cruelty, Fargo, Raising Arizona and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?). It is a brooding gangster noir movie, dark and cold as gun metal. Set in prohibition-struck 1929 in an unnamed eastern American city, the Coen brothers’ gangster drama is inspired by the works of Dashiel Hammett which will surprise and delight fans of the horrific Blood Simple and the manic Raising Arizona. In filming Miller’s Crossing, the brothers assembled a team of old and new collaborators and a first-rate ensemble cast.

It’s the compelling story of a friendship between the local political boss, Leo (four time Academy Award nominee Albert Finney - Tom Jones, Erin Brockovich) and Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne - The Usual Suspects, End of Days), the ‘man behind the man’. The men’s friendship is severed when Leo and Tom both fall in love with the same woman, Verna (Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden - Pollock, Mystic River). Tom joins ranks with Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito - Barton Fink, The Singing Detective) Leo’s foremost enemy and rival for political power, and a bloody gang war erupts. The lynchpin between them all is Verna’s brother, Bernie (John Turturro - Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, Mr Deeds) who crosses and double crosses all parties. Will Tom sell out to a friend? Is Verna still Leo’s girl? Can Johnny muscle in? Or will Bernie turn the tables on his friends and family? Miller’s Crossing is propelled by gripping action, stunning cinematography and black humour to create an intense and twisting plot that walks a deadly tightrope.