Criterion starts up a rumpus by bringing the Coen Brothers gangster classic to blu-ray in a nice new 2K restoration with some spiffy new extras in tow. Let’s try not to give ’em the high hat as take a walk in some dangerous woods.

Prohibition is is full force and Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney) is the tough Irish gangster with the chief of police and the mayor in his back pocket, cementing his status as top dog in town. Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) is his stoic right hand man who finds himself up to his next in double and triple crosses, spurned on by simpering bookie Bernie (John Turturro) who’s been skimming fixes from rival gangster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito). To complicate matters, Tom has taken a shine to Bernie’s sister Verna (Marcia Gay Harden) who happens to also be Leo’s moll. We open with Caspar letting Leo know of his discontent with Bernie, but Bernie’s under Leo’s protection which makes for an awkward situation to say the least that kicks off a full blown gangland war with Tom caught right in the middle trying to play both sides and trying not to end up dead at the hands of The Dane (J. E. Freeman), Caspar’s right-hand man who becomes committed to destroying Tom.

Miller’s Crossing, the Coen Brothers’ third film, shows the expanded scope of story that the Coens are capable of working with. Starting with the smaller dark and twisty neo-noir Blood Simple and proceeding to the cartoonish desert romp of Raising Arizona, this one really is the first opportunity for the Coens to really go all-in with a big story complete with complicated characters, overlapping, inter-connected plot lines and a sense of unpredictability that keeps the viewer on their toes. This is a Coen film I’ve always liked quite a bit but its dark brutality has kept me a little at a distance in the past. Revisiting it again for this review though, I’ve developed a new appreciation of the comedy beats here as well. Yes, this film gets very bleak in places with blunt, shocking violence (the sequence of Leo’s nighttime attack in his home is almost comical in how over-the-top the violence gets), but it also fully embraces the trappings of its film noir lead character in Tom Reagan as he gets the crap beaten out of him over and over again from every side.

Speaking of Tom, another aspect of this one on this rewatch that I hadn’t truly appreciated is Tom Reagan as a character and how Gabriel Byrne plays him. Like Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade before him, Tom Reagan is something of a cipher with hidden motivations. We are never really sure exactly what game Tom is playing (and we get that sense that at times neither does Tom himself). This adds an element of chaos into the proceedings that keeps us engaged with where the story is going. Another interesting thing about Tom is that he’s not the steely and infallible anti-hero that we’ve seen represented by the likes of Humphrey Bogart in the past. Tom doubts himself at times, feels uncomfortable in his skin, panics, can’t help placing bets and racking up debts. He’s a flawed character who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty in the pursuit of what he thinks he wants. We think we have a sense of his moral code until our perception of his values changes. This is a large part of that unpredictability I spoke of earlier. Some may say this is an inconsistency in characterization. I say, this is a portrait of a complex person who doesn’t always know what he wants until after he sees it start to slip away.

Criterion utilizes an existing 2K master to bring Barry Sonnenfield’s warm soft focus cinematography to life. I could quibble over Criterion’s laziness in not striking a new 4K transfer but it’s still a very nice, clean image supervised by Sonnenfield himself for a previous release that captures the autumnal color tones prevalent in the film. Where Criterion did pony up though is in a dynamic new 5.1 surround sound audio mix that really pops, easily trumping any previous releases of the film.

The extras aren’t the most extensive I’ve seen from Criterion, but they are of a consistently high quality. In addition to an informative essay in the included booklet from film critic Glenn Kenny, Criterion has given us a series of new interviews with cast and crew from the film. We have “The Actors” featuring a new interview with Gabriel Byrne and John Turturro reminiscing on what drew them to the film and how they tried to convey its quirky complexities in their performances. There’s “The Look” with Barry Sonnenfield going details of his process of working with the Coens to nail down the particular visual themes and style that would come to define Miller’s Crossing. It also includes “The Music” which interviews composer Carter Burwell and music editor Todd Kasow on the importance of the music in the film. We also get some cool information around the sheer level of detail that product designer Dennis Gassner went into to recapture that 1930’s prohibition era through locations and props. My favorite of all of them is “Hard-boiled: The Coen Brothers and Megan Abbott”, a conversation between Abbott and the Coens discussing their love of hard-boiled crime fiction and how it has influenced their films. In particular they deep dive into how Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, influenced Miller’s Crossing, with Hammett’s The Glass Key and Red Harvest being major influences in particular. They also discuss the similarities and differences between Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain and how each of them have informed elements of other Coen films as well. Very informative and interesting if you want to know more about the Coen Brothers’ influences. Last and probably least is a “From the Archives” older set of interviews with various actors from the film that essentially acts as a glorified press junket. It doesn’t really offer much of anything that the previous extras hadn’t already elaborated on in more detail and feels like mostly a puff piece of the sort Criterion usually don’t bother with.

I frankly adore this movie, while it probably isn’t my absolute favorite Coen Brothers film, it is still uniformly well-made, well-acted and compelling to watch and while it gets fairly dark, it still has the Coens’ trademarked moments of levity. While I would have like to have seen a new transfer to truly justify a double dip of this one, the combination of the new DTS 5.1 track and the illuminating extras make this the release to get if you don’t already own Miller’s Crossing on blu-ray. If you have the prior 20th Century Fox release and want a more robust package than what was offered there, it’s most likely worth an upgrade, especially if you are a big fan of the film.