Sign up for the Thought Catalog Weekly and get the best stories from the week to your inbox every Friday. Below is a list of terms, definitions, and examples used in the movie. But Miller’s Crossing is really where that tradition really begins, especially with Turturro, Polito, and a pair of actors with smaller roles in the film, Steve Buscemi and Frances McDormand. Killing Bernie finally puts the nail in coffin of Tom's relationship with Verna. If you love cinema, then it’s safe to assume that you also love the Coen brothers. The entire cast is excellent, but like Byrne, Turturro may have done the best work of his career as oily grifter Bernie Bernbaum. “I thought you said you didn’t care about Leo no more.” “. • It wasn’t until I was preparing to write this installment that I read Roger Ebert’s original review of the movie, in which he expressed a fair amount of skepticism. |, August 14, 2007 Hours of Operation Monday - Saturday 9am - 4pm . This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. From Albert Finney's hopelessly romantic kingpin, Leo O'Bannion to (Coen regulars) Jon Polito as his hotheaded nemesis Johnny Caspar, John Turturro's shady bookie, Bernie Bernbaum and his cohort Mink, a small but important Steve Buscemi. It is without question the movie on whose behalf I have proselytized most obsessively in my lifetime. Albert Finney really shines as Leo, a gruff untouchable gang boss. [to Caspar] You haven't bought any license to kill bookies and today I ain't sellin' any. Submit your writing to be published on Thought Catalog. What was the rest of the story? The showdown at the end between Tom and Bernie, the long walk into the woods. Even if it was delicious and expertly crafted, at some point the gimmicks and mastery go too far and I just want a cheeseburger. By opting to have your ticket verified for this movie, you are allowing us to check the email address associated with your Rotten Tomatoes account against an email address associated with a Fandango ticket purchase for the same movie. Tom walks Bernie out into the middle of the woods where he is supposed to shoot him. As is by now abundantly clear, I fell in love with the film when it originally hit theaters. All rights reserved. Your Ticket Confirmation # is located under the header in your email that reads "Your Ticket Reservation Details". One could make the case that this willful complicatedness is a flaw. It isn’t just Byrne’s lyrical Irish brogue (an acting choice he had to sell the Coens on—they wanted him to speak with an American accent), it’s the scalpel-sharp Machiavellian instincts he brings to every decisive moment in the film’s plot. Those questions would torture the Coens for months as they wrestled with writer’s block despite having carte blanche from Fox. I cannot, however, shake the feeling that it could have maybe made it to the giants, if only a couple things had been different. However, they knew that they wanted it to be different…bigger…more ambitious. They saw the talent (how could they not? It didn’t have the gritty urban nihilism of Abel Ferrara’s King of New York. Its a hard thing to say such brilliant film makers who, again, made a good film simply tried too hard, but I think that is the core issue holding this film back. By their third film, Miller's Crossing, there was no denying that this was truly a creative partnership that knew how to construct and deliver films of great substance and enjoyment. In addition, I was reminded that the score was used in the trailer for The Shawshank Redemption(!) It never fully convinces in terms of either period or plot. All rights reserved. • Miller’s Crossing may not be the Coens’ best film—that would probably have to wait almost two more decades—but it has been my favorite ever since its release. An immigrant visits a mob boss, hat in hand, asking for a favor. What a magnificent sequence: the surprise narrative inversion, the stunning flare of the tommyguns, and of course, “Danny Boy” as sung by the Irish tenor Frank Patterson. Like the far chattier Quentin Tarantino, who would burst onto the rapidly evolving American auteur scene a few years after the Coens’ break-out hit Raising Arizona, the Minnesota siblings spent their teen years as movie-mad sponges.