Rating of
4/4
The Coens' First Glorious, Overplotted Masterpiece
SIngli6 - wrote on 10/25/11
While 'Blood Simple', the Coen Brothers' debut feature, was in many ways a masterpiece, 'Miller's Crossing' elevates the siblings to another level. It is a neo-noir so elaborate that multiple sittings are almost mandatory to fully process and appreciate the baroque richness of the work. Although the Coen Brothers' earlier films sometimes suffered from an awkward contradiction of sorts between their idealistic American sensibilities and their otherwise broad cynicism, 'Miller's Crossing' boasts none of those flaws and instead embraces the pair's nihilistic and misanthropic irreverence towards man with various astute and grotesque caricatures of Prohibition era Americans. Indeed, 'Miller's Crossing' can be said to be one of the Coens' most nihilistic works.
Alas, the brothers didn't realise that they had found a very attractive alcove of antipathy here, and sadly would not truly embrace this sort of tone again until eleven years later with the doubly impressive 'The Man Who Wasn't There'.
