I still haven’t seen The Batman, but here is a great crime movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend:
For fans of film noir, like me, few experiences can be more delightful than watching – and endlessly rewatching – Miller’s Crossing (1990). Set in the Prohibition era, in an unnamed city brimming with corruption (in my mind, the Gotham from Batman: The Animated Series and The Batman Adventures), Joel and Ethan Coen’s breathtakingly elegant thriller follows an Irish mobster’s right-hand man trying to prevent an all-out gang war from escalating, which involves trying to figure out – and to manipulate – the Machiavellian agendas of a dozen different players. Rich in plot, stylish dialogue, and memorable characters, the methodical script and tight cinematography are matched by the cool performances of an outstanding cast (including Coen regulars Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi, and John Turturro), clutching their fedoras while spouting ultra-witty lines at a machine-gun pace (and also firing actual machine guns from time to time). I suppose you can read in the story a subtext about business and politics (allied in the form of powerful men who keep cynically throwing the authorities around to do their bidding), but Miller’s Crossing is an ode to genre above everything else, with the Coen brothers distilling the writings of Dashiell Hammett and decades of crime cinema, from 1930s’ gangster pictures (the likes of the original Scarface and the underrated Bullets or Ballots) to later American and European classics. Then again, fiction and narratives (especially from Hollywood) have always been such a key part of US history that this ends up being a relatively moot distinction.
Having recently ventured into Coen-esque crime comedy territory with Logan Lucky, last year Steven Soderbergh returned for No Sudden Move, a neo-noir that also borrows from various eras: it’s set in the mid-1950s but shot like a 1970s’ picture (including at least a couple of nods to Sidney Lumet). The tortuous twists and turns make Miller’s Crossing feel like linear child’s play in comparison, as if someone has fused a Brian Azzarello comic with a Paul Playdon script for Mission: Impossible. The movie starts out as a recognizable heist yarn, with hardened crooks recruited one by one for the job, but the exponential number of complications and double-crosses plays almost like a parody of the genre’s conventions. While hardly innovative, No Sudden Move is another pitch-perfect rendition of this type of stories, especially of their underlying themes: the more the protagonists work their way up through the chain of command, the blurrier the line becomes between organized crime and corporate capitalism.
Or you can just forget about pastiches and throwbacks and actually go back to the original movies from the noir period. Although it doesn’t involve gangsters, one of the closest examples to Miller’s Crossing I can think of, in terms of rhythm and vibe, is Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success. It revolves around a press agent tasked with breaking up the relationship of the sister of an influential columnist, so there are less murders involved, unless you count character assassinations… That said, not only is it a drama shaped like a crime thriller – complete with bent cops, a couple of beatings, and a labyrinthine plot driven by a ruthless, desperate lead – but it’s also shot like one: every image is gorgeous, every line is cackling, every scene packs a punch. A masterpiece.
When it comes to comic books, you should track down Blue Note: The Final Days of Prohibition, a two-volume French series published in English by the digital platform Europe Comics.
Blue Note: v1
The two volumes are set at the same time, running parallel with each other while focusing on the perspective of two different men in a rainy American metropolis during the tail end of Prohibition: a disgraced boxer trying to prove his worth and a blues guitar player in search of inspiration, both of them caught in a web of organized crime as the mob makes preparations for the changing status quo. Even more than the period setting, the noirish gangster plot about fixed fights, and the theme of Irish-Italian distrust, what brings Blue Note and Miller’s Crossing together are Mikaël Bourgouin’s autumnal colors and facial designs (the cast looks made up of character actors), not to mention the beautifully precise framing, reminiscent of Barry Sonnenfeld’s cinematography. As for the script, by Bourgouin and Mathieu Mariolle, it confidently taps into all the clichés of fiction about this era in a classic example of European love/hate infatuation with the United States – particularly the US as visualized by Golden Age Hollywood, but also by the Coen brother’s filmography, so beloved in the old continent (and quite possibly a direct inspiration for this comic).