The Coen Brothers bring their sardonic wit and keenly observed character portraits to the Prohibition era in their third feature Miller's Crossing. Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) is the right hand man and enforcer for Irish mob boss and politician Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney), caught in an escalating turf war with Italian gangster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) for control of the city. Complications in the form of the seductive Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), Leo's lover who also has a lot of time for Tom, and her no-good gambler brother Bernie (John Turturro) set off a chain of betrayals and violence that could bring down the city's criminal empires.

The Bros drew influence from the 1920s novels of Dashiell Hammett, in particular Red Harvest and The Glass Key, both in their conception of the unnamed American city Miller's Crossing takes place in and Gabriel Byrne's cypher of a leading man. The classic genre trappings of guys in hats, bootleg bourbon and tommy guns are all here, but there's an abstract quality in the lack of moral centre that feels more like a return to pre-Code cinema than neo-noir. The handsome autumnal tones and languid pace gradually give way to the chaos of sudden violence and shifting allegiances, a nightmarish world where nothing is clear.