Miller's Crossing - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Miller's Crossing is a 1990 American gangster film

Mob film

Mob films are a subgenre of crime films dealing with organized crime, often the Mafia. Especially in early mob films, there is some overlap with film noir.-History:...

by the Coen brothers

Coen Brothers

Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers...

and starring Gabriel Byrne

Gabriel Byrne

Gabriel James Byrne is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, writer, cultural ambassador and audiobook narrator. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined Londo's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's screen debut came in the Irish soap opera The Riordans and the...

, Albert Finney

Albert Finney

Albert Finney is an English actor. He achieved prominence in films in the early 1960s, and has maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television....

, Marcia Gay Harden

Marcia Gay Harden

Marcia Gay Harden is an American film and theatre actress. Harden's breakthrough role was in Miller's Crossing and then The First Wives Club which was followed by several roles which gained her wider fame including the hit comedy Flubber and Meet Joe Black...

, Jon Polito

Jon Polito

Jon Polito is an American actor and voice artist, who is known for working with the Coen Brothers, most notably in the major supporting role of Italian gangster Johnny Caspar in Miller's Crossing. He also appeared in the first two seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street and on the first season of...

and John Turturro

John Turturro

John Michael Turturro is an American actor, writer and director known for his roles in the films Do the Right Thing , Miller's Crossing , Barton Fink , Quiz Show , The Big Lebowski , O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Transformers film series...

. The plot concerns a power struggle between two rival gangs and how the protagonist, Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), plays both sides off each other.

In 2005, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

chose Miller's Crossing as one of the 100 greatest films made since the inception of the periodical. Time critic Richard Corliss

Richard Corliss

Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...

called it a "noir with a touch so light, the film seems to float on the breeze like the Frisbee

Frisbee

A flying disc is a disc-shaped glider that is generally plastic and roughly in diameter, with a lip. The shape of the disc, an airfoil in cross-section, allows it to fly by generating lift as it moves through the air while rotating....

of a fedora

Fedora (hat)

A fedora is a men's felt hat. In reality, "fedora" describes most any men's hat that does not already have another name; quite a few fedoras have famous names of their own including the famous Trilby....

sailing through the forest."
Tom Reagan (Byrne) is the long-time confidant of Leo O'Bannon (Finney), an Irish American

Irish American

Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...

political boss

Political boss

A boss, in politics, is a person who wields the power over a particular political region or constituency. Bosses may dictate voting patterns, control appointments, and wield considerable influence in other political processes. They do not necessarily hold public office themselves...

who runs a Prohibition

Prohibition in the United States

Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...

-era city.