I originally bought “Miller’s Crossing” because it was on the same DVD as “Road to Perdition”, a movie I’d wanted to see for quite some time. That I got a movie I hadn’t even heard of before in the bargain, was just a bonus. So, when I casually skimmed my movie shelves for something to watch last Saturday, and found out that I had a Coen brothers movie I’d never heard of standing untouched on said shelf, what choice did I have? I had to watch it.

“Miller’s Crossing” is a gangster movie set in a city in the eastern regions of the US, some time during the Prohibition. An Irish gangster, Leo, is running the city, but he soon runs afoul with a less powerful, Italian mob guy, Caspar. This distresses Leo’s second hand man, Tom, a clever man with little brawn and even less heart, who thinks it’s folly to start a gang war for the reasons Leo’s doing it. During the movie Tom — the movie’s main protagonist, and a real antihero — changes sides a couple of times, and there’s a lot of fairly intricate plotting as Tom deploys his intellect in his struggle to survive in a world were toughness is valued above cunning.

This movie is quite good. The characters are for the most part both interesting and solid, especially Tom, whose struggle to prove that he has a heart is an integral part of the movie. It’s also qute gory and violent, if you’re into those kinds of things, although it is far from as graphic as, say, the travesty that is “Scarface”. Apparently, it also has a few elements which can be interpreted in light of Jungian psychology, or something like that, but I don’t know enough about that to say anything more specific myself.

All in all a solid and entertaining mafia movie, that I enjoyed more than I did, say, “Once Upon A Time In America”. 8.0/10.