Category: Crime drama

The French Connection (1971)

A ruthless, obsessed (of course!) cop chases down a drug kingpin in this Best Picture winning crime drama

Director: William Friedkin

Cast: Gene Hackman (Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle), Fernando Rey (Alain Charnier – “Frog One”), Roy Scheider (Detective Buddy “Cloudy” Russo), Tony Lo Bianco (Salvatore Boca), Marcel Bozzuffi (Pierre Nicoli – “Frog Two”), Frédéric de Pasquale (Henri Devereaux), Bill Hickman (FBI Agent Bill Mulderig), Ann Rebbot (Marie Charnier), Harold Gray (Joel Weinstock), Arlene Faber (Angie Boca), Eddie Egan (Captain Walt Simonson), Sonny Grosso (FBI Agent Clyde Klein)

Cops and criminals: do they have more in common than we’d like to think? In Friedkin’s Oscar-winning The French Connection, the lead cop and criminal are both obsessive, single-mindedly ruthless and locked into a cycle of actions that isn’t going to be change with one big bust. Look at them in isolation and its hard to tell at times which is which: the French drug dealer is a suave cosmopolitan type, unfailingly cultured and polite, but remorseless; the cop is a border-line racist and narcissist who doesn’t give two hoots about collateral damage, kills without remorse and whose life is one of tunnel-visioned obsession.

Based on a true-story – the model for Doyle, Eddie Egan, has a cameo playing his own boss – the film covers the arrival in New York of French heroin dealers, led by Alan Charnier (Fernando Rey) looking to make a killing with their prime product. Opposite them is narcotics officer Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman), who’s practically the dictionary definition of anti-hero. Doyle and Charnier engage in a battle of wits and force across New York during one blisteringly cold few days in Winter, and never mind who gets in the way.

The French Connection is about masculinity, and that no matter what many men don’t like to lose. Getting beat is certainly the main concern for Doyle, who I’m not sure has ever really thought twice about the impact of drugs (he’d be just as passionate chasing down coca-cola or stamps if you banned those). Neither has Charnier, with his reassured cool of old Colonial Europe, which just knows better than the nouveau Americans. (there is an underlying subversive fear of America being undermined by this suspiciously metropolitan Frenchman, the country’s best defence being a loud-mouthed, son of the streets).

Played superbly by Gene Hackman, Doyle is presented as a man we are invited to make up our own mind about. He’s obviously an effective detective and he doesn’t just go the extra mile: the job is a night-and-day obsession. He’ll spend hours pounding the streets, staking out a hotel on a rainy street, walk miles tailing a subject and barely spend a minute off-duty. He’ll also drive cars wildly though crowded streets, shoot a man in the back, rough-up suspects and treat others with an abrupt anger, xenophobia or both. As a model for the society he’s sworn to protect, he’s a disgrace – but is he the effective agent of crime-fighting we need?

Friedkin’s film largely aims to present Doyle as he is, within its documentary realism – although I’d argue the film repeatedly looks at his commitment and never-say-quit-energy with barely veiled admiration. The film is assembled with an on-the-streets immediacy reminiscent of The Battle of Algiers – added to by the casting of many non-actors in key roles. It’s shot with a drained-out series of muted colours (even more drained-out in Friedkin’s egotistical blu-ray remastering). All shot on location, it captures the slummy flavour of the rougher ends of New York. Right from the off, we see Doyle and Russo roughing up an informer in something between a slum and building site (including the famous “do you pick your toes in Poughkeepsie” exchange, a classic bit of psychological messing with criminals – incidentally check out Scheider trying not to corpse as Hackman roars through this.)

The investigation proceeds with a muted sense of grounded realism. There is a lot of time-consuming following, watching and taking notes. Word is picked up by informers. Careful surveillance work fills out the gang and its members. Doyle is constantly frustrated by bureaucratic demands, not to mention turf-war squabbles with the FBI (who, in addition, think he might be next door to a dirty cop which is pretty fair). Similarly, the criminals go through careful negotiations around timing, testing the purity of the goods and working out the best way of dodging the cops.

Friedkin’s film is so wrapped up in a perfect “slice of life” documentary realism shell, that it gets away with much of the second half being a piece of pure filmic flair. First and foremost is its famous car-chase. Narrowly surviving an assassination attempt from “Frog Two”, Doyle requisitions a car and hares through New York at 100mph trying to beat the elevated train “Frog Two” is escaping on, to the next station. In this superbly cut sequence, Friedkin pioneers the sort of low-angled front bumper shots that would be a staple of car chases for years to come. It’s pounding, gripping and brilliantly assembled, a raw slice of action that uses the film’s documentary style to trick you into thinking it’s something akin to the realism elsewhere.

But it’s a bit of filmic fantasy – and wouldn’t be out of place in Dirty Harry, the other 1971 film about a morally-complex cop. Doyle is certainly a less attractive person than Callahan – with no real moral feelings just a love of winning. Winning is what motivates him in this car chase: he has little interest in questioning the shooter (who has, to be fair, taken out several civilians, including a mother of a young baby) or preserving public safety and way more about getting revenge. He tears through the streets, sending civilians flying, scares Frog Two into killing two more people and finally caps it by shooting his unarmed would-be-killer in the back after a cursory warning. (Not the first time he’ll pull the trigger after only the most slender of warnings).

Winning is all that matters though. Charnier is just as bad. He ruthlessly exploits a patsy and has no concerns about bodies piling up. Fernando Rey’s impish smile and campily cool little wave to Doyle through the subway doors, after he has managed to shake him off in a marvellous sequence in a subway station, is all about enjoying a smug triumph. No wonder Doyle repeats the same gesture to him late in the film when the tables are turned.

It’s the way Friedkin’s film mostly doesn’t ask us to blindly root for Doyle that really makes it stand out. In many ways the film is less exciting – or even less intriguing a character study – than Dirty Harry. It uses its documentary realism heavily at times, to justify showing the sort of shocking, exploitative material (at one point, the camera lingers on the incidental victims at a car crash scene at distasteful length) that you would expect to find in Dirty Harry or Shaft. What Friedkin’s euro-inspired style – and Hackman’s committed playing – managed to do was make itself feel like it was making a higher artistic statement than those films, which played a much more conventional hand.

That and the sense that nothing has really changed. Early in the film Doyle and Russo charge into a bar – a bar by the way with an entirely black clientele, who Doyle delights in abusing – to seize whatever drugs people seem to have on them. It’s a basic clean-up and shakedown – but hours later you can be sure it will be look nothing happened there. Similarly, the film’s end credits reveal all involved basically dodged charges (except for the patsy for the smuggling of course), while the cops got transferred. We’ve got one small win at the cost of at least five lives.

I seem to change my mind on The French Connection every time I see it. Sometimes I think it’s not that different from a host of other police actioners released at the same time (add Bullit to that list). At others, I get gripped by its edgy mise-en-scene and Friedkin’s challenges to conventional morality. And I guess, a film that can make you switch your mind constantly, should be seen as some sort of classic.

Nightmare Alley (2021)

A mysterious drifter gets more than he bargained for in del Toro’ flashy but unsatisfying film

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Bradley Cooper (Stanton Carlisle), Cate Blanchett (Lilith Ritter), Rooney Mara (Molly Cahill), Toni Collette (Zeena Krumbein), Willem Dafoe (Clem Hoatley), Richard Jenkins (Ezra Grindle), Ron Perlman (Bruno), David Strathairn (Pete Krumbein), Mark Povinelli (Major Mosquito), Mary Steenburgen (Felicia Kimball), Peter MacNeill (Judge Kimball), Paul Anderson (Geek), Clifton Collins Jnr (Funhouse Jack), Jim Beaver (Sheriff Jedediah Judd), Tim Blake Nelson (Carny Boss)

There isn’t any magic left in the world, it’s all show and tricks and no wonder. Nightmare Alley is del Toro’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning The Shape of Water and you can’t not admit it’s a triumph of style. It’s a glorious fusion of film noir and plush, gothic-tinged horror. There is something to admire in almost every frame. But it’s also all tricks and no wonder. There’s no heart to it, just a huge show that in the end makes nowhere near the impact you could expect.

In the late 1930s Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is a drifter with a dark past, who is recruited as a labourer in a travelling carnival. Learning the ropes from freak show owner Clem (Willem Dafoe), he’s taken under the wing (in every sense) by mesmerist mind reader Zeena (Toni Collette) and taught the tricks of the art (observation and careful word codes using an assistant to guess names, objects and other facts) by Pete (David Strathairn). Eventually Stanton and his love, circus performer Molly (Rooney Mara), head to the big city where, after two years, Stanton reinvents himself as celebrity mind-reader and medium. There Stanton gets involved with psychiatrist Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) in a long con where he will use the recordings of her sessions with patients to act as a medium to put them in touch with their lost ones. But is there a danger Stanton isn’t ready for in one of his clients, powerful businessman Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins)?

Nightmare Alley looks fabulous. But it’s hellishly overlong and curiously uninvolving. It’s like Del Toro fell in love with the whole project and forgot to search for the reason why somebody else would love it. It’s a strangely unshaped film, alternating between long, loving scenes glorying in the dark mood, baroque performances and design but then makes drastic, swift jumps in character psychology that constantly leaves you grasping at engaging with or understanding the personalities of its characters.

Its design is faultless though – it’s no surprise that its only Oscar nominations outside the Best Picture nod were all in technical categories. Dan Lautsen’s cinematography is inky black, with splashes of all-consuming colour. It’s a marvellous updating of film noir, with deep shadows spliced with angles reminiscent of Hammer-style horror. The production design is a labour of love, the carnival sets a hellish nightmare of unsettling shapes, forms and structure contrasting with the art deco grandness of the big city. The design is pretty much faultless, a real labour of love.

But the same effort didn’t go into pacing and story. This is a slow-moving, self-indulgent film, that frequently seems to be holding itself at arm’s length to make it all the easier for it to admire itself. It looks extraordinary, but it’s a frequently empty experience, more interested in mood and striking imagery than character and emotion.

Bradley Cooper gives a fine performance as Stanton. He has an air of cocksure charm, and Cooper skilfully shows this is largely a front of a man who, when push comes to shove, is capable of sudden and unflinching acts of violence. We get an early hint of this when he reacts to being struck by an escaping circus freak with unhesitating brutality. It recurs again and again in the film, and Stanton proudly states his avoidance of alcohol with all the assurance of a man who knows the bottle could unleash dark forces that he could never control. Cooper is vulnerable but selfish and above all becomes more and more arrogantly convinced of his own genius and bulletproof invulnerability, so much so that he drives himself further and further on into self-destruction.

There is some rich material here, so it’s a shame that for all that we never really seem to be given a moment to really understand who he is. Much has to be inferred from Cooper’s performance, since the film seems content to state motivational factors – troubled parental relationships, greed, ambition, a desire to make something of himself – without ever crafting them into a whole. Stanton remains someone defined by what he does.

And Stanton is the only character who gets any real oxygen to breathe, with the others largely ciphers or over-played caricatures. Rooney Mara as his gentle love interest is under-developed and disappears from the film for long stretches. Cate Blanchett gives a distractingly arch performance, somewhere between femme fatale and Hannibal Lector and is so blatantly untrustworthy it’s never clear why Stanton (an expert reader of people!) trusts her completely. Richard Jenkins is miscast as a ruthless businessman, lacking the sense of danger and capacity of violence the part demands.

Most of the rest of the cast are swallowed by the long carnival prologue, that consumes almost a third of the film but boils down to little more than mood-setting and a repeated hammering home of a series of statements that will lead into a final scene twist (and I will admit that is a good payoff). The carnival seems like a self-indulgent exploration of style, and several actors (Perlman, Povinelli and even Collette) play roles that add very little to the film other than ballooning its runtime.

The earlier section would have perhaps been better if it was tighter and more focused on Stanton and his mentor, well played by David Straithairn. I appreciate that would have been more conventional – but it would also have been less self-indulgent and helped the opening third be less of a stylish but empty and rather superfluous experience (since the film’s real plot doesn’t start until it finishes). Drive My Car demonstrated how a long prologue can deepen a whole film – Nightmare Alley just takes a long, handsome route to giving us some plot essential facts, without really telling us anything engaging about its lead character.

It makes for an unsatisfying whole, a cold and distant film packed with arch performances – although Cooper is good – and events that frequently jump with a dreamlike logic. It’s a marvel of design but way too much of a good thing, and constantly seems to stop to admire itself in the mirror and wonder at its own beauty. It becomes a cold and arch study of a film not a narrative that you can embrace. And you can’t the same about many of Del Toro’s other films – from Pan’s Labyrinth to Pacific Rim they’ve got heart. Nightmare Alley doesn’t really have that.

Klute (1971)

Paranoia runs rampant in this fascinating – and chilling – murder thriller that taps into into conspiracy thrillers

Director: Alan J. Pakula

Cast: Jane Fonda (Bree Daniels), Donald Sutherland (John Klute), Charles Cioffi (Peter Cable), Roy Scheider (Frank Ligourin), Dorothy Tristan (Arlyn Page), Rita Gam (Trina), Nathan George (Trask), Vivian Nathan (Psychiatrist), Morris Strassberg (Mr Goldfarb)

There is one question everyone asks when watching Klute: why the heck is it called Klute? Would calling the film Daniels have been too dull? Would Bree have made it sound like a history of cheese? Klute is dominated by its character study of Jane Fonda’s Bree Daniels, split between her desire to be an actress and the comforting sense of control and avoidance of intimacy her work as call-girl brings. Klute uses the conventions of the male detective movie to conduct a sympathetic, compassionate character examination of its female lead. Match that with Pakula discovering his affinity for creeping 70’s paranoia, and you’ve got one of the most interesting and rewarding films of the decade.

John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is a small-town cop called in as a private investigator after a six month New York police investigation fails to find his friend, businessman Tom Gruneman. The only lead they have is a series of obscene letters found in Gruneman’s office written to New York call girl Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda). Klute discovers Bree has no memory of Gruneman, but Klute believes she may be in serious danger. Together they investigate the crime further, which becomes more and more focused on a mysterious abusive client and even more complicated by the growing relationship between the quiet, reserved Klute and the strong-willed, independent Bree.

Klute uses the conventions of a gumshoe detective movie, spliced with a hard-hitting 70s fascination with grimy, sensationalist crimes (this was the same year as hard-bitten, shades-of-grey cops in Dirty Harry took on a serial killer and The French Connection explored the drugs trade), in this case the assault and murder of prostitutes. But this isn’t a whodunnit, or even really a detective story. The film is barely 45 minutes old before Pakula basically reveals who the killer is (the suspect list has only two people on it in any case). Most of the investigation takes place off screen. Some answers are kept vague. There is no cathartic moment of success.

Instead, the film feels far more like it’s using its Laura-ish set-up (the big difference here being the taciturn detective’s love interest is alive rather than just a painting) as a backdrop to deep dive in Bree’s personality. Bree is played with a stunning (and Oscar-winning) verisimilitude by Jane Fonda. Fonda immersed herself totally in the character, even living in the apartment set during shooting (Pakula had a working toilet installed) and developing a careful psychological background to Bree that is brilliantly introduced through our frequent cuts to her sessions with a coolly professional psychiatrist.

This is a portrait of a female sex worker on screen, where she’s neither a tragic or pathetic figure, or a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold (the standard tropes). Instead, this is a woman struggling with a crippling fear of intimacy and a compulsion to control, who finds a freedom and release in acting out the fantasies of others. Bree speaks to her psychiatrist of being a call girl not as a curse or source of shame, but something she takes a sort of freedom from. It’s clear that really makes her sweat is not adjusting herself to whatever men want (faking an orgasm while checking her watch with one John, or acting out an elaborate, detailed fantasy for a lonely tailor) but the idea of having to be herself, to display something emotional and true.

And prostitution has the advantage over acting as she sets the terms. We are introduced to Bree as just one in a row of sitting actresses auditioning for an advert, each of them dismissively given a score from A to C. She later auditions for Shaw’s Saint Joan with a detailed, heartfelt reading (she’s clearly a good actress) which is stopped mid-speech by a bored director. With Fonda making clear that control is vital to Bree’s sense of well-being, no wonder she struggles with this dismissive world. Or that she finds a greater freedom in high-end prostitution, where we see she sets the terms with a business-like professionalism and is the centre of the focus and attention of her John’s for the whole of their session. This is a feeling she doesn’t get from anyone else.

What really scares her is the thought of a genuine emotional intimacy with Klute. In their first encounters she assumes she can seduce him with the professional ease she does most men, dropping naturally into her role of seductive dream-girl, offering him sex in return for recordings he has of her from his investigation. Later she will prove a point by coming to him in the night and seducing him with a pretence of vulnerability and fear, as if to prove to him (and herself) that she can work out exactly what mood she needs to control any man.

But it’s buried in genuine fear about emotional attachment. To her psychiatrist she talks about not understanding why Klute seems, with no ulterior motive, to be concerned for her safety and well-being despite the things he’s knows about her or that she’s done and said to him.

There is a marvellous scene where the two of them go shopping for fruit (Klute of course knows exactly how to choose the best fruit, he’s that sort of guy). First, she impulsively steals an apple like a naughty, impulsive child. When Klute responds with a bemused half-shock, she stands behind him, a grin spreading across her face, then she lightly rests her head (almost not touching) on his back – then follows him down the street, holding the end of his coat. It speaks worlds of how something in her emotional growth has been slightly stunted somewhere along the line. And the fact this intimacy is followed in the next scene by a drug-fuelled blow-out, speaks volumes of her fear of it.

It’s a brilliant performance by Fonda, throbbing with empathy and emotional complexity. She’s perfectly abetted by Donald Sutherland, who proves himself once again one of the most generous actors in the game. Klute is in many ways the typical rube in the big city, the one honest cop. But he also has a wet-eyed vulnerability, a tenderness and an urge to protect that as motherly as it masculine. He reveals very little emotionally, not from fear but from a shyness.

He’s also an observer. And Pakula’s film partly draws links between detective and voyeurism. Let’s not forget Klute also bugs Bree’s phone and follows her. The camera frequently shoots the action from distance, through windows and looking down on the action: the idea of being constantly observed lingers over the picture, giving it a rich vein of paranoia. The killer listens to disembodied audio recordings of Bree, and these frequently play over the action not only echoing this paranoia, but re-enforcing how her personality is a fractured one between the independent exterior and the less certain interior.

Pakula’s film pulls all this together into something creepy and unsettling but is also a fascinating character study. That is perhaps its best trick. You come into it expecting a film noir or a detective story. What you get is a compelling analysis of the psyche of one woman, who emerges into the picture and takes complete control of it. Perhaps that’s why it’s called Klute – it’s as much a part of the misdirection as everything else. With its psychological complexity and creeping sense of being watched, this would set the tone for many other films that followed in the 70s.

Ransom (1996)

Every parent’s nightmare gets tackled in this efficient, smart (but not quite smart enough) thriller from Ron Howard

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Mel Gibson (Tom Mullen), Rene Russo (Kate Mullen), Gary Sinise (Detective Jimmy Shaker), Delroy Lindo (FBI Special Agent Lonnie Hawkins), Lili Taylor (Maris Conner), Liev Schreiber (Clark Barnes), Donnie Wahlberg (‘Cubby’ Barnes), Evan Handler (Miles Roberts), Brawley Nolte (Sean Mullen), Paul Guilfoyle (FBI Director Stan Wallace), Dan Hedaya (Jackie Brown)

There is no greater fear for any parent than losing a child. Doesn’t matter if you are prince or pauper, the same heart-pounding dread is there. But sometimes the risks are greater if you a prince. Because the more money you have, the more likely a kidnapper might think you’d be willing to swop that money to get your kid back.

It’s what kidnappers decide when they take the son of Airline owner Tom Mullen (Mel Gibson). The kidnappers want $2million and no questions asked, in return for his son Sean (Brawley Nolte). Tom and his wife Kate Mullen (Rene Russo) are willing to pay – with the advice of FBI Agent Lonnie Hawkins (Delroy Lindo). But after the first bungled handover, Tom becomes convinced the kidnappers have no intention of returning his son alive. So, he takes a desperate gamble to try and turn the tables, much to the fury of secretive kidnapper (and police detective) Jimmy Shaker (Gary Sinise).

Ransom is a change of pace for Ron Howard, his first flat-out thriller. And it’s a very good one. Ransom has a compulsive energy to it, powered by sharp filming and cutting and some impressively emotional performances from the leads. It also takes a number of unexpected narrative twists and turns – before it reverts to a more conventional final act – and manages to keep the viewer on their toes.

Its main strength is an emotionally committed performance from Mel Gibson. Taking a leaf from Spencer Tracy’s book, this is Gibson at his best, very effectively letting us see him listen and consider everything that happens around him. Mullen is a determined man who plays the odds, and cuts corners only when he must – but is also convinced of his own certainty. He applies his own business learning – of negotiation and corporate deal-making – to this kidnapping, which is an intriguingly unique approach. Gibson’s performance is also raw, unnerved and vulnerable and he plays some scenes with a searing grief you won’t often see in a mainstream movie. Russo does some equally fine work – determined, scared, desperate – and their chemistry is superb.

Howard coaches, as he so often does, wonderful performances from his leads and from the rest of the cast. Gary Sinise turns what could have been a lip-smacking villain into someone chippy, over-confident and struggling with his own insecurities and genuine feelings for his girlfriend (a doe-eyed Lili Taylor, roped into kidnapping). Delroy Lindo is very good as the professional kidnap resolver and there are a host of interesting and engaging performances from Schreiber, Wahlberg, Handler and Hedaya. Ransom turns into a showpiece for some engagingly inventive performances.

Howard also triumphs with his control of the film’s set-pieces. The kidnapping sequence is highly unsettling in its slow build of the parent’s dread. The first attempted exchange is a masterclass in quick-quick-slow tension, with Gibson and Sinise very effective in a series of cryptic phone calls. The ransom phone calls are similarly feasts of good acting and careful cross-cutting, which throb like fight scenes. Howard understands that this is a head-to-head between two men struggling in a game of deadly one-up-manship, both of them constantly trying to figure out not only their next move, but the likely reaction of their opponent.

For much of the first two thirds of the film, Ransom is very effective in its unpredictability. There is a genuine sense of dread for how this might play out and the radical changes of plan both sides of the kidnap play out land events in a very different place than you might expect at the start. The more hero and villain try to out-think each other, the murkier the plot becomes.

It’s unfortunate that the final third devolves into a more traditional goody/baddy standoff with guns, punches and our hero reasserting his control (and the safety of his family) through the fist and the trigger. But then I guess in the 90s you couldn’t have a Gibson film without a bit of action. But when the film focuses on the thinking, talking, slow-burn tension and the sheer terror of parents who have lost a child, it’s a very effective and tense film that stands up to repeat viewings.

Lady Macbeth (2016)

Florence Pugh is either a feminist icon or a ruthless monster in this Gothic drama

Director: William Oldroyd

Cast: Florence Pugh (Katherine Lester), Cosmo Jarvis (Sebastian), Naomi Ackie (Anna), Christopher Fairbank (Boris Lester), Paul Hilton (Alexander Lester), Golda Rosheuvel (Agnes), Anton Palmer (Teddy)

On a rural estate in Northumberland in 1865, Katherine (Florence Pugh) enters a loveless marriage with Alexander (Paul Hilton), son of landowner Boris (Christopher Fairbank). The marriage is a disaster, with the couple incompatible and Katherine bored and trapped with no friends or allies. When Alexander and Boris travel for business, she finally gets the chance to explore her surroundings and enters into a passionate sexual relationship with estate worker Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). When Boris – but not Alexander – returns, Katherine begins a chain of events that will see her commit a series of increasingly shocking crimes to hold onto the things she wants.

Oldroyd’s film is adapted by Alice Birch from a Russian short story, and is told with an icy, observatory coldness that doesn’t flinch from the increasingly sociopathic ruthlessness of its lead character. The film at first seems like it will set out a feminist fable, of a trophy wife struggling against the neglect and imprisonment of forced marriage. But, as it progresses, any pretence that Katherine is a feminist hero is stripped away: she is modern only in the most dreadful sense – a woman who will willingly commit almost any act of ruthlessness to safeguard her interests.

Playing Katherine, the film is blessed with a star-making turn from Florence Pugh. Only 19, Pugh gives a performance of such stunning depth and intelligence from a young actress that possibly hasn’t been seen since Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures. She’s a master of outward stillness and inscrutability, while always communicating the raging whirlpool of emotions underneath the surface. She’s fiercely intelligent, viciously ruthless, frequently observes other characters silently and can twist her face into a mocking defiance. Pugh also communicates the desperate emotional need for connection that motivates this woman, her willingness to go to such shocking lengths motivated by that yearning for a love that she has never known.

Oldroyd is careful not to present her a Gothic monster (would certainly be easy to do so!). The film is careful to outline how unwanted and ill-treated she is by Alexander and his father. Boris (a bullying Christopher Fairbank) ignores and talks down to this person-as-a-piece-of-property, basically just an unlooked-for freebie with some land, who is failing to get on with the production of an heir. Alexander (Paul Hilton, superbly weak and dripping with contemptuous bitterness) has no interest in his wife, his sexual interest restricted to ordering her to strip and face the wall while he pleasures himself. Neither of these characters ever have anything like a conversation with her, instead speaking to her like a dog or malfunctioning appliance.

So, you can see why she is so drawn to the passion of Sebastian – and also, perhaps, why she might find this cocky but not-exactly-sharpest-tool man an attractive chance for her to wear the trousers for once. Their couplings have a sexual urgency and passion to them that is lacking for anything else in the film. But we never see them as emotional or intellectual equals. There is no scene of romance, bonding or conversational or unsexual emotional connection with them. Katherine becomes obsessed with Sebastian – but it seems to be at least as much an obsession with the sex and the sense of control he brings her, as much as it is Sebastian himself.

As Sebastian, Cosmo Jarvis is initial bluster and wide-boy charm that strips away to reveal a man far more timid, scared and increasingly out-of-his-depth with what he’s got caught up in. For all his Lady Chatterley’s Lover physicality, Jarvis has a real vulnerability in his eyes and a certain little-boy lost quality. His panic and shock as event balloon become increasingly tragic.

Equally affecting is the terror of Naomi Ackie’s maid, torn between different sides. Like Pugh, Ackie is superb at suggesting emotional torment under a still surface and her character Anna frequently finds herself the mute observer of increasingly dangerous events, unable to influence them.

The film is shot with a coolness that at times makes it hard to connect with emotionally. In many ways this is a horror film, with a creeping intimidation, scoreless backdrop and a chilly aesthetic of empty rooms and muted colours. There are some bravura scenes: a life-changing breakfast scene is shot with a terrifying but suggestive stillness, just as it is played by Pugh with a chilling unreadability. Oldroyd’s film masterfully uses a number of simple and unflashy camera set-ups that build up to an overwhelming feeling of dread.

And some of this stuff is hard to watch. Two killings are shown in disturbing detail, enough to haunt your dreams. But the film wisely just presents the facts and avoids judgement – however implied that might be. It also makes for an intriguing condemnation of avarice – everyone in the film seems to be longing for something, but none of them find that struggle was worth it. And at its centre is a intriguingly unknowable and unreadable woman, who only becomes more alarming the more we find out about her.

Lady Macbeth is sometimes a little cold and distant for its own good. But its hauntingly grim and has a stunning, career-making performance from Florence Pugh. Filmed with creeping dread, it’s a cold, disturbing film that will linger with you.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

The mechanics of courtroom showmanship is ruthlessly exposed in this gripping drama

Director: Otto Preminger

Cast: James Stewart (Paul Biegler), Lee Remick (Laura Mannion), Ben Gazzara (Lt Frederick Manion), Arthur O’Connell (Parnell McCarthy), Eve Arden (Maida Rutledge), Kathryn Grant (Mary Pilant), George C. Scott (Claude Dancer), Orson Bean (Dr Matthew Smith), Russ Brown (George Lemon), Murray Hamilton (Alphonse Paquette), Brooks West (Mitch Lodwick), Joseph N Welch (Judge Weaver)

Winston Churchill once said Democracy was the worst form of government, except for all the others. You could say something similar about trial by jury: it ain’t perfect, but it’s better than any other justice system we’ve given a spin to in human history. Trials aren’t always forums for discovering truths: they are stages to present arguments (or stories), and they are won by whoever has the best one. Maybe cold, hard facts and evidence make up your story, maybe perceptions. Maybe it’s about how you tell the story. Elements of all three are found in Otto Preminger’s brilliant courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Murder.

In a small town in Michigan, a US army lieutenant, Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara) is arrested for the murder of innkeeper Barney Quill. Manion says he did the deed only because Quill raped Manion’s wife Laura (Lee Remick). Representing him is lawyer Paul Biegler (James Stewart), a former district attorney looking to start-up a new practise. On the opposite side is new DA Mitch Lodwick (Brooks West) and, far more of a worry, hot-shot lawyer Claude Dancer (George C. Scott) all the way from the Attorney General’s office. They say there was no rape – only a jealous murder after a consensual affair. It’s he-said-she-said, only “he” is dead. How will the trial clear that one up?

Otto Preminger was the son of a noted Austrian jurist, and Anatomy of a Murder can be seen as a tribute to his father, and to the process of the law itself. Not that it’s a hagiography. The film recognises the virtues as well as the faults of the system. Above all, that the system is not perfect, it can’t base every decision on firm facts and often requires people to take leaps of faith based on their gut instinct about who may, or may not, be telling the truth.

Preminger’s film does its very best to put us in the position the jury is in. We get no real evidence about what happened beyond what they get, and very few bits of additional information (except, perhaps, for seeing what many of the characters are like outside of the courtroom). Instead, the viewer is asked to make their mind-up on whether events fell-out as Manion claims (or not) based on our own judgement of the probabilities and of his (and Laura’s) character. The film opens with the crime committed and closes shortly after the verdict: there are no flashbacks or pre-murder scenes to help nudge us towards one view or another. The murder victim appears only as a photo. Like the jury we have to call it on what we see in front of us.

Anatomy of a Murder also makes clear there are plenty of shades of grey in the process of justice. During his first consultation with Manion, Biegler carefully suggests he consider whether he was in fact insane when he committed the deed – as that sort of defence will be much easier, since he doesn’t deny the killing. Sure enough, on their second meeting, Manion is now deeply unsure about his state of mind. Biegler then works backwards to establish precedent for the plea (a finds a single, over 75 years old one) to pull together a defence of irresistible impulse and to peddle hard a picture of the victim as an unrepentant rapist practically asking for a wronged husband to do the deed.

Biegler’s case is flimsy – but the key thing is to present it with pizzazz. And that’s what he’s got. Stewart’s performances in Hitchcock classics are highly regarded, but this might well be his finest dramatic performance. This is a brilliantly sly deconstruction of Stewart’s aw shucks charm: Biegler promotes an image of himself as a down-on-his-heels, bumpkin-like country lawyer, punching above his weight against the big city lawyers, Stewart dialling up the famous drawl. But it’s miles from the truth: Biegler is a former DA, an experienced trial lawyer and a formidable advocate. Stewart flicks the switch constantly, visibly putting on his persona like a skin, shedding it when no longer needed.

There is a constant suggestion that everything Biegler does is for effect. From fiddling with fishing tackle during the prosecution’s opening statements, to furious court-room theatricals as he thuds tables at slights and injustices. All of it is carefully prepared, rehearsed and delivered to make an impact on the jury. The constant parade of effect, manufactured outrage and appeals to an “us against them” mentality provokes exasperation from his opponents and a weary toleration from the Judge (played by real-life McCarthy confronting attorney Joseph N Welch). Stewart uses his Mr Smith Goes to Washington nobility, but punctures it at every point with Biegler’s cynicism and opportunism. Biegler, at best, persuades himself his client is innocent – but I would guess he doesn’t really care either way. He immediately perceives the personalities of his clients and then does his best to shield their less flattering qualities from the jury.

The one advantage we have over the jury is the additional insight we get into this strange couple, living a possibly unhappy, and certainly love-hate, marriage. Manion plays wronged fury in the court – but Gazzara gives him a lot of self-satisfied smarm and bland indifference to his crime in real life, meeting every event with a smirk that suggests he’s sure he can get away with anything. Equally good, Lee Remick’s Laura presents such a front of decency and pain in court, you’ll find it hard to balance that with the promiscuous, blousy woman we see outside of it, who provocatively flirts with intent with anything that moves. But it’s all about the show: present them right, and these unsympathetic people can be successfully shown as a conventional loving couple.

The prosecution is playing the same game. George C. Scott is superb as a coolly professional lawyer, who will use any number of tricks – from angry confrontation, to seductive reasonableness – to cajole a witness to say anything he wishes them to say. He will turn on a sixpence from being your friend, to berating you as a liar. And he’s not averse to his own morally questionable plays in court. Like Biegler, he knows presenting a good story is what is needed to win: the truth (or otherwise) isn’t enough.

Anatomy of a Murder still feels like a hugely insightful look at the legal process. Most of its runtime takes place in court, which Preminger shoots with a calmly controlled series of long-takes and two-shot set-ups, that help turn the film into something of a play (as well as a showpiece for fine acting). Along with its very daring (for the time) exploration of rape, it has a very cool soundtrack from Duke Ellington, that drips with allure and gives the film a lot of edge. The acting is all brilliant – along with those mentioned, Eve Arden is first-class as Biegler’s loyal secretary and Arthur O’Connell sweetly seedy as his heavy-drinking fellow lawyer. Anatomy of a Murder gives a first rate, at times cynical, look at the flaws and strengths of trial by jury – and is an outstanding courtroom drama.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand are the Macbeths in this brilliant, noirish, superb Shakespeare film

Cast: Joel Coen

Director: Denzel Washington (Lord Macbeth), Frances McDormand (Lady Macbeth), Corey Hawkins (Macduff), Brendan Gleeson (King Duncan), Harry Melling (Malcolm), Bertie Carvel (Banquo), Alex Hassell (Ross), Kathryn Hunter (The Witches), Moses Ingram (Lady Macduff), Ralph Ineson (Captain), Stephen Root (Porter), Miles Anderson (Lennox), Jefferson Mays (Doctor)

Shakespeare on screen is difficult to pull off. Focus too much on the language and you end up with something more theatrical than cinematic. Zero in on the visuals and you lose what makes Shakespeare great in the first place. That’s not even to mention that films – with their huge audiences – tend to focus on simple, more traditional interpretations of a play that add little to interpreting it afresh. These are all problems avoided by Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth which is bloody, bold and resolute and jumps straight into the upper tier of great Shakespeare films. Inventive, dynamic, gripping and excellently acted it succeeds in being both a creative production of the play and something truly cinematic.

Shot in a crisply clean black-and-white, the 4:3 frame frequently filled with rolling mist and stark white light (it’s superbly shot by Bruno Delbonnel), this is a Macbeth set in a Jan Kott inspired Samuel-Beckett-tinged wasteland, with Scotland a bleak, blasted country, its characters leading lives full of sound and fury that signify nothing. The Macbeth’s castle is an Esher like construction of perfectly formed empty rooms, towering walls and arches casting grim shadows and open ceilinged rooms allowing onlookers to observe everything. There are brilliant images: not least the handle to Duncan’s door which is strikingly lit to resemble a knife. Characters frequently emerge from the mist or the darkness to walk towards us and confess their darkest thoughts.

No Shakespeare film has better used set and location since Orson Welles’ Othello – a film this is sharply reminiscent of, with its brilliant use of angles and shade that constantly disconcerts the viewer (even leaving us confused at points on whether we are looking down or up). Coen also seems to have been inspired by Peter Brook’s grimly nihilistic King Lear film, with this Scotland being trapped firmly in a circle of destruction powered by the witches. All three are played by Kathryn Hunter, whose contortionist twisting and ability to switch her vocals on a sixpence from sing-song to a Gollumesque growl make them truly feel of the earth and yet not. Hunter is inspired casting – sometimes representing all three witches in a single schizophrenic body, at others playing all three at once. A brilliant image at one point shows her double reflection in a watery pool, turning her body immediately into a trinity.

Hunter’s movement is birdlike and agile – fitting since it’s suggested the witches can transform themselves into carrion crows, flying over Scotland picking bones clean of fresh. The first image is the three birds circling the Captain as he walks slowly across a beach to report to Duncan. Later Hunter perches on a crossbeam in another opened-ceiling room, subtly poking Macbeth on to greater monstrosities. There is a cycle of destruction here – and the film’s ending implies all this chaos is bound to start again.

Crucial to this is Ross. Following Polanski’s Macbeth – and again heavily inspired by Jan Kott – Alex Hassell’s unctuous Ross, ingratiates himself with all while happily engaging in acts of brutality. He personally executes Cawdor (by beheading), joins Banquo’s murderers, shows the way to the sacking of Macduff house and hands Malcolm both the crown and Macbeth’s severed head. But Coen takes it further again: rather than a cruel opportunist, this Ross seems to be an agent of the witches – or maybe even a witch himself. Hassell’s costume, with its curiously feminine robe and wing-like arms, echoes the witches and Ross moves smoothly from side-to-side even in the final acts, planting seeds of further destruction (including further implied murders) and collaborating directly with the witches to restart the cycle at the end.

All this makes Macbeth and Lady Macbeth at times feel like rather tragic puppets at the heart of a terrible cycle of events they cannot control. It certainly fits with Denzel Washington’s balanced and intelligent performance in the lead. While Washington doesn’t mine as much weight and meaning from the text as the great stage Macbeths, he gives his line readings an unstudied naturalism and a dynamic and thoughtful rhythm (even if he is prone a little too much to the “soft-slow/fast” approach). His Macbeth is a weak, indecisive man, happy only when he is in action. Clearly ambitious from the start, he binds himself in knots thinking but, once a decision has been made, has no hesitation. Violence is an instinctive tool – he kills several people with no hesitation and a lightening aggression – but he’s lost without direction. He clings to the crown as if it will somehow give the things he has done meaning.

Washington’s performance shifts gears once Macbeth has decided to fully commit himself to those scorpions that fill his mind, becoming an unbalanced mixture of fatalistic and recklessly impulsive. No wonder he has less need for his wife. Frances McDormand is perhaps even better as a Lady Macbeth who sees the crown as her last chance for legacy in a world that has left her behind. McDormand really understands the way to mine nuance from the language. Frequently inpatient with her husband, she is decisive where he is not, but squeamish around violence in a way he isn’t. Both Washington and McDormand manage to suggest a great deal of unfulfilled sadness in the Macbeths, two people in the twilight of their years who pounce on a chance for a last hurrah but find themselves psychologically unsuited for the consequences.

The two leads are at the head of a uniformly strong cast. Hunter and Hassell are both superb. Bertie Carvel is a brooding but honest Banquo. Corey Hawkins a forceful but thoughtful Macduff, played with guilt and wise from the start on Macbeth’s villainy. Moses Ingram brings a lot of warmth to a striking scene as Lady MacDuff. Ralph Ineson’s delivery of the Captain’s speech is spot on. Harry Melling is an immature, stubborn Malcolm.

But the real star here might just be Coen’s direction. The brooding, overbearing beauty of the film is all part of its atmosphere of creeping intimidation and danger. There are some truly striking, haunting images: the flame lit murder of Banquo, a deranged Macbeth fighting a spectral hallucination of Banquo, water pouring down into the flagstones after Macbeth’s final visions of the future, the smoke and mist filled murder of Macduff’s children (a shot of Wellesian brilliance), Lady Macbeth standing before a sheer drop, the imaginative arrival of Birnam wood, Macduff and Macbeth’s final duel in a narrow battlements. This is a punchy, brilliant, beautiful, intelligent and unique reimagining of the play that mixes Shakespeare, visual and has something clear and unique to say about staging the play. Comfortably one of the greatest Shakespeare films ever made.

House of Gucci (2021)

Ridley Scott’s bizarre film is half-pantomime, half true-crime drama

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Lady Gaga (Patrizia Reggiani), Adam Driver (Maurizio Gucci), Jared Leto (Paolo Gucci), Jeremy Irons (Rudolfo Gucci), Al Pacino (Aldo Gucci), Salma Hayek (Giuseppe Auriemma), Jack Huston (Domenico De Sole), Reeve Carney (Tom Ford), Camille Cottin (Paola Franchi), Youssef Kerkour (Nemi Kirdar)

There are few juicier combinations than glamour, money, fashion and true crime. Scott’s House of Gucci taps into this with a film that’s somewhere between pantomime and tragedy. Full of actors giving their very best “Mamma Mia!” Italian accents and shrugging shoulders, it oscillates wildly from scene-to-scene between black comedy and operatic high drama. It’s a strange mixture, with House of Gucci becoming some sort of bizarre treat, like an end-of-year treat for cinema viewers to unwrap.

The film follows the disastrous marriage between Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) and Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga). Patrizia, a ruthlessly ambitious gold digger, zeroes in on the shy Maurizio, heir to 50% of the Gucci fashion fortune, and marries him. This is all to the horror of his father Rudulfo (Jeremy Irons), who (correctly) identifies Patrizia’s ambitions, and cuts them off. Taken under the wing of Rudolfo’s brother Aldo (Al Pacino), Patrizia pushes Maurizio into a management role in the company – and down a slippery slope that will lead to forgery, betrayal and eventually murder.

House of Gucci feels like it might have existed more comfortably as a ten-part TV drama. It’s essentially a big, brash version of the Emmy-award winning The People vs. OJ Simpson, but told in about a quarter of the time. What this basically means is that any subtle character work and detailed story telling is sacrificed, with the focus firmly on the salacious and entertaining drama. The overall effect is a swift rush through a story that becomes a series of sensational, almost comedic, clashes between larger-than-life personalities squabbling over a huge pot of money. Like Dallas on the big-screen, it’s all scored with a series of funky pop tunes, adding to the sense of pantomime.

It’s an odd outing from Scott, with (it felt to me) little of the individual stylistic touches that he has bought to other projects. In fact there’s very little of his stamp on it: it’s Scott as professional craftsman. He and the film feel very confused by the tone. Mostly the film doubles down on black humour and show-casing big, brash performances. Then it might acknowledge briefly that there were real victims here, which it wants to treat with a level of respect. By and large, the film is like a glossy magazine article, with Scott nudging you as you turn each page and saying “you will not believe what happened next!”

I suppose House of Gucci probably could have explored more the personal and emotional hinterlands of its characters. Relationships shift dramatically from scene-to-scene, with Maurizio and Patrizia’s marriage souring over-night, for no clear reason. Pre-existing family rivalries and politics could have been explored more: it’s heavily implied Aldo and Rudolfo are already engaged in a struggle of ideals (Aldo wants commercial expansion, Rudolfo to remain an elitist fashion house). Drama could have been made of the attempts by both brothers to use other members of the family as pawns in this feud. But then, a film that dived into the psychology of the players might well have ended up being more about business and less about the entertaining ruthlessness of the rich and famous.

The performances are wildly different in tone. Lady Gaga effectively holds the film together as an ambitious woman who is only partially aware (at first) of what a ruthless gold digger she is. Devoid of any interests other than being rich (“I’m a people pleaser” she tells Rudolfo when asked what her interests are), Patrizia is the sort of monster of ambition who would fit comfortably into an episode of Desperate Housewives. Setting her cap at Maurizio with a laser-like focus and shafting everyone left, right and centre (although Gaga does hint at her deeply repressed insecurity) it’s a performance that walks a fine line between OTT and human. The film has a lot of fun at her amoral certainty – she sees no problem with forging Rudolfo’s signature on some vital papers after his death (the film even sets forgery up as Chekhov’s skill in its opening scenes) and Gaga enjoyably plays the outrage that only someone convinced they never wrong can feel.

Opposite her, Driver plays Maurizio as a timid, easily seduced young man, pushed into taking a leading role in a business he has no real interest in (or aptitude for). Driver is softly spoken – and gives the most restrained and grounded performance in the film – and frequently meets another demand from his wife with a chuckle and a reluctant “Patrizia…”. House of Gucci steps carefully around Maurizio, sometimes playing him as an innocent abroad, at others as a man corrupted by his wife into a creature of ambition.

Most of the rest of the cast go for a broad style which, while fun to watch, only adds to the sense that we aren’t supposed to be taking anything too seriously. While many of the Gucci family probably were larger-than-life personalities, I’m not sure they could have been the cartoons they are here. Irons goes for a waspish Scar-like mastery of the cutting remark. Pacino doubles down on his shoulder-hunched energy, with added shouting. Hayek gives a performance that’s a near master-class in Vampish camp, plotting murder from a mud bath.

Towering above them all is Jared Leto, who seems to be in a film all of his own, with every scene another clip for his “for your consideration” show-reel. Buried under a mountain of latex that transforms him into a clone of Jeffrey Tambor, Leto goes all out as the passionate, ultra-stereotypical-Italian Paolo Gucci, in a performance that’s either a shameless parade of showing off or somewhere near a stroke of genius. It works because, beneath all the hammy exuberance, Leto make’s Paolo a desperately sweet guy, the only real innocent in the film. Leto and Pacino in particular feed off each other – a late scene between the two is hilarious (I’m not sure in the right way, but who can tell what these actors are aiming for sometimes) in its joyful overplaying.

Perhaps joy is the one thing House of Gucci needs a little bit more on. I wonder how more entertaining again it might have been if the film had really gone all out on being a camp classic. It shies away from this, wanting to leave some vestige of respect for the dead and not lose its true-crime-roots. But, I wonder if a director more suited to this material than Scott – who struggles to stamp his personality on it – might have done more to make this into a cult classic.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Javier Bardem is terrifying in the Coen’s Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones (Sheriff Ed Tom Bell), Javier Bardem (Anton Chigurh), Josh Brolin (Llewelyn Moss), Woody Harrelson (Carson Wells), Kelly Macdonald (Carla Jean Moss), Garret Dillahunt (Deputy Wendell), Tess Harper (Loretta Bell), Barry Corbin (Ellis), Stephen Root (Wells’ Hirer)

The borderlands of America. A vast panoramic countryside, where times may change but the underlying violence and savagery continues to lurk just under those dusty plains. It’s ground the Coens have explored before, but perhaps never with such mastery as in No Country For Old Men, a film that mixes the style of a classic Western with the nihilism and bleakness of their most challenging work, all capped with just a hint of their incomparable quirky black humour. A pitch-perfect adaptation of Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men scooped four Oscars, including Best Picture.

In the border Terrell County in Texas in 1980, a Vietnam-vet and welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across a drug deal gone wrong in the desert: several dead men, a truck full of drugs and a suitcase containing $2 million. Taking the case, Moss sends his wife Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald) to her mother’s for safety and flees first to Del Rio then Mexico to try and keep the money. Unfortunately, he’s being followed by relentless, psychotic hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) who will stop at nothing to fulfil his contract – and heaven help anyone who gets in the way. Trailing in their wake is worn-out Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who feels increasingly adrift in a violent world he no longer understands.

The Coen’s film is a bleak, pessimistic and doom-laden look at man’s inhumanity to man – all of it watched with a weary sadness by Jones’ tired Sheriff, in a hauntingly gentle performance. The vision the Coens present is a world that may have moved on in decades from the Wild West, but still has that era’s cavalier regard for life. Life is very cheap in No Country For Old Men and even the slightest mistake, hesitation or act of kindness can have horrific consequences. It’s a film where death is a constant, terrible surprise – so much so it claims the life of one significant character entirely off-screen and can be handed out on the basis of a coin toss.

That coin toss will come at the prompting of Chigurh. Played with an Oscar-winning calm voidness, by an unworldly Javier Bardem, Chigurh is relentless, merciless and completely detached from humanity. Emotion is a complete stranger to him, other than a pride in his work and a capability for being irritated by a non-co-operative target. Chigurh sees himself as an instrument as fate, a nihilistic view where individual choice is removed from the equation. In one chillingly memorable scene, he relentlessly but with a terrifying calm gets a gas station attendant to call a coin toss: the attendant struggles to understand what he’s wagering, but it’s all too clear to us – and in case we miss the point, Chigurh urges him to keep the coin afterwards as it’s a momentously lucky object.

There’s a possibility that this is how Chigurh rationalises the world to himself. He is absolved of all moral consequences for his actions, as everything is pre-ordained, objects and people travelling to predetermined outcomes. It’s a viewpoint another character invited to toss a coin late in the film will firmly reject, saying all Chigurh’s actions are a choice. They’re probably also right. Chigurh kills throughout the film partly because it’s the most expedient way to get what he needs – from a car, to escaping a police station – but also because of the pride he takes in his work being the best, and anything obstructing that should be punished. He has no regard or interest in the money or even for his employers, all of them disposable in the pursuit of doing his job well. It’s perhaps not a surprise that a survey by psychologists named him the purest psychopath caught on film.

Pity those who cross his path. Compared to him, Woody Harrelson’s professional hitman is just that: a guy doing a job rather than an elemental, unstoppable force of nature (Harrelson is superb as a charming, slightly cocky pro, who accidentally gets in over his head). In many ways, it makes it even easier to root for Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss as he tries to stay one step ahead of him with his ill-gotten gains. In a breakout role, Brolin makes Moss the quintessential everyman, with just enough touches of grace and decency to make us overlook the fact that he’s an opportunist putting himself and his family at risk to steal drug money. Moss is such an underdog – but also so ingenious and determined – he becomes the perfect person to root for.

The film largely chronicles the battle of wits between Llewelyn and Chigurh across Texas and Mexico, the two of them carrying out a hunter-tracker dance that has echoes of similar duels from directors like Leone. In one set-piece moment after another, we see their coolness under fire, as well as their focused determination to get what they want, regardless of cost. Brolin’s performance is a superb slice of taciturn Texan-ness, with just enough decency to get him in trouble: from protecting his wife, to taking water back for an injured man, to rejecting the advances of a poolside floozy. It’s interesting that he invariably ends up in more trouble when he tries to do something good – but such behaviour sets him aside from Chigurh and lets us know he’s one of us.

All this bleakness is followed with sad-sack sorrow by Tommy Lee Jones’ sheriff, whose eyes speak of endless, uncountable horrors that fresh ones don’t even seem to shock him anymore. Jones bookends the film with two superb monologues, that reflect on what seems like the increasing brutality of the modern world. But the Coens are smart enough to know that this sentimentality is misleading – Bell’s uncle Ellis (a fine cameo by Barry Corbin) tells him frankly that the world was ever thus and its naïve to think otherwise. This is also one of Jones’ finest performances, a tragic Homer, totally ineffective, reduced to following around and picking up the pieces.

All of this plays out without hardly any trace of a music score – Carter Burwell’s scant score makes use of everyday sound and hints of music at a few dry moments – hammering home the coldness and bleakness of it all. Excellently shot by Roger Deakins, whose classic, restrained, pictorially beautiful presentation of the West brings back a truckload of cinematic memories, the Coen’s film still finds room for dashes of dry humour. Sure, it ends with a nihilistic comment on the horrors of the world and our hopelessness in them, but there are small shoots of hope growing in there if you look closely. They are well hidden, but they are there.

No Country for Old Men is perhaps the Coens’ most fully rounded, morally complex, intriguing and dynamic film, a wonderful mix of the style of their earlier work with the bleakness of Fargo and just some touches of the wit they displayed elsewhere. Cormac McCarthy is the perfect match for two masters, whose direction is as faultless as their script. It’s a film that rewords constant viewing and is constantly shrewd and terrifying in its analysis of the human condition. Essential watching.

Miller's Crossing (1990)

Gabriel Byrne (and hat) is outstanding in the Coen’s brilliant gangster pastiche Miller’s Crossing

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen

Cast: Gabriel Byrne (Tom Reagan), Marcia Gay Harden (Verna Bernbaum), Albert Finney (Leo O’Bannon), John Turturro (Bernie Bernbaum), Jon Polito (Johnny Caspar), JE Freeman (Eddie Dane), Steve Buscemi (Mink Larouie), John McConnell (Bryan), Mike Starr (Frankie)

In a forest clearing, a black hat dances in the wind; sometimes it almost touches the ground before another gust lifts it up again. What does it mean – Who can say? That hat is the heart of the Coen Brothers marvellous pastiche of, and tribute to, gangster films – probably the only early Coen brothers film I really like (and the one I’ve seen the most). The Coens, bless ‘em, always liked to claim it was just a film about a man and his hat. But it’s also a rewarding, complex, jet-black film noir comedy about ethics and morals, with intriguingly unknowable characters. And lots of hats.

Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) is the friend and fixer of Irish crime boss Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney) who runs a prohibition era city. Cool, calm and collected Tom is the smartest guy in the city – and a compulsive gambler with a self-destructive streak a mile wide. Leo’s rival, Italian gangster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) wants to whack crooked bookie Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro), who’s spreading the word on boxing matches Caspar has fixed, making Bernie a packet and eating into Johnny’s profit. Problem is Leo says no – because he’s in love with Bernie’s sister Verna (Marcia Gay Harden, very good), a ruthless femme fatale, who also happens to be sleeping with Tom. When Leo finds out, Tom finds himself in the middle of a struggle to control the city – and forced to play both ends against the middle to save his skin.

Miller’s Crossing is a masterpiece of pastiche. Shot with a coolly steady-hand by Barry Sonnenfield – deliberately apeing classic film noir– and production designed within an inch of its life to look like the perfect Hollywood idea of a 1920s-era gangster film, it’s a perfect mix of everything from Hammett to Chandler to Puzo. It’s a sort of hyper-remake of Hammett’s The Glass Key, where a crooked boss and his fixer are split apart by a woman, but fundamentally remain loyal to each other. Everything you could expect from a classic gangster film appears, but dialled up to eleven: from the grandiose design, to bullet-spraying Tommy gun ruthlessness and the bloody mess left behind.

Miller’s Crossing is great because, unlike those other early Coen films, it combines loving pastiche and quirky humour, with a genuinely gripping story and fully rounded, complex characters. You can enjoy it as a homage, but also on its own terms as a compelling piece of story-telling. It’s sense of atmosphere is faultless, with a delightful mood of whistful regret behind all the killing that comes from Carter Burwell’s pitch-perfect score, riffing brilliantly off Irish folk songs. The film is crammed with brilliant sequences, ranging from comedy, gun-toting action and stomach-churning tension.

It opens with an obvious, crowd-pleasing Godfather homage, with Caspar sitting across from Leo entreating him for action. But take a listen to what Caspar is talking about as he asks for the right to kill Bernie: Ethics. Ethics is what the film is really about. Every character in Miller’s Crossing makes a choice about their moral stand. Because, even in a world of killing and violence, man (and woman) gotta have a code. That’s not about right and wrong, but simple rules you live by.

A code is what Tom has. Superbly played by Byrne – Hollywood handsome, but world-weary with a touch of self-loathing and tired of always seeing several steps ahead of everyone else – Tom is one of the most intriguing enigmas in a Coen film. How can someone this smart be such a mess? He owes thousands to bookies and he’s screwing his best friend’s girl. For all his smarts, and ability to see all the plays (something he proves time and again), there is something fragile about Tom. The Coens remind us of this with their running joke of Tom being smacked about endlessly (every major character lands a blow at some point on him). For all this, Tom very rarely fights back: not only does he not like getting his hands dirty, there is also a sense of sado-masochistic guilt about Tom. Like he’s smart enough to know he’s in a dirty business, and deserves all this physical abuse.

The thing that makes Tom’s world work is ethics – in his case loyalty to Leo. Not even being kicked out by his furious friend changes that. Miller’s Crossing has a strangely sweet bromance at the heart of it, gaining a lot from Finney and Byrne’s natural chemistry and forging a relationship that’s part brotherly, part father-and-son. Of course, a girl can’t come between them. Tom’s clings to his loyalty to Leo – the thing that makes him able to exist in this world – and no threat from Berne or promise of a good deal from Caspar will make him compromise. Rather he will play all of Leo’s enemies (and Leo himself) off against each other, to make sure his friend emerges on top.

It’s all symbolised by that hat. Tom dreams about that hat dancing in the wind – his literal nightmare is losing that hat (his ethics) in the wind. In so many scenes, Tom keeps in constant contact with his hat, balancing it on his knee or rolling it around his hands. When Verna wants to grab his attention, it’s the hat she steals back to her apartment. It’s a physical representation of his grounding, of his contact with reality. Without the hat he’s vulnerable: it’s inevitably tossed away before a threat or beating.

Tom’s not alone: every character has their own ethics. Bernie is an appallingly mercenary, selfish, two-faced, cheating little rogue – but he’s just made that way, it’s nothing personal it’s how he gets ahead. Caspar is obsessed with loyalty, justifying to him the amount of violence he hands out. Leo has a little boy’s loyalty to old friends and family, the sort of guy shocked when bad things happen to friends but who is happy to literally shred people with a tommy gun. Verna is out for herself, but wants to protect her brother. Even the ruthless Dane is loyal to Caspar and to those he’s “soft on” to the bitter end. All these characters justify their actions by adherence to ethical rules they’ve made for themselves.

But only Tom is really worried about getting his hands dirty. That’s something Bernie exploits in the film’s pivotal – and most famous – scene as Tom is unwillingly forced to prove his new ‘loyalty’ to Johnny by executing Bernie in the woods. In a tour-de-force by Turturro, Bernie begs, pleads and weeps for his life urging Tom to “Look into your heart”. It’s the first – and only – decision Tom makes for sentiment in the film. Naturally, it comes back to bite him. Tom’s journey in the film is perhaps to remove sentiment and heart from the equation – after all it’s all leading to a Third Man-ish ending where our hero is left standing alone while the only person he cares about walks away.

Aside from Byrne, the film is crammed with sublime performances. Finney is excellent as a big puffed-up, violent Teddy bear. Polito is hilarious as a wound-up ball of violent energy and poor judgement. JE Freeman is terrifyingly sadistic but also strangely loyal. Harden is a nightmare image of a femme fatale, ruthless to an extreme. There is a great cameo from Buscemi as a fast-talking fixer. Best of all is Turturro – grasping, selfish, cowardly, cocky, weasily and brilliantly amoral.

It’s all superbly directed by the Coens, even if sometimes their delight in shocking violence goes too far (like the childish delight in seeing bodies shredded by bullets) – not only do they get the mood perfect, but if you have any doubts about their ability to direct a set-piece take a look at Finney’s masterful Danny Boy scored shoot-out. Their script is also a knock-out of pastiche gangster parlance, as well as building a fascinating exploration of how we use morals to justify any actions we want. Miller’s Crossing is about those fatal moments where we decide whether we can justify to ourselves the actions we take and the people we have become. Or maybe it is all just about a hat.