Miller's Crossing (1990)

For their third feature, Miller's Crossing (1990), Joel Coen and Ethan Coen focused their film-literate gaze on the gangster genre, blending it with the film noir legacy they first explored in Blood Simple (1984). Set during Prohibition, the film evokes 1930s gangster film classics and Dashiell Hammett novels in its portrayal of Irish and Italian gangsters and the conflict touched off between them by a complicated web of betrayals involving a sinister crime boss (Albert Finney), his right-hand man (Gabriel Byrne), and a glib bookie John Turturro. Barry Sonnenfeld's shadowy cinematography lends a somber cast to the events, while set pieces like the forest execution and a chandelier-splintering shoot-out to the strains of "Danny Boy" revel in the Coens' talent for combining violence, drama, and high style. Though a few dissenters viewed Miller's Crossing as all surface and no substance, critics were impressed by the strong cast -- especially Turturro and Finney -- and bravura technique, declaring that the Coens had fully come into their own as filmmakers. The writer's block the Coens reportedly suffered while working on the screenplay became fodder for their next film, Barton Fink (1991). ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide