“Red-Crossing”

After watching Miller’s Crossing in its entirety, I noticed many more differences than similarities between the movie and Red Harvest. Miller’s Crossing’s main character, Tom Reagan, represents the Continental Op, and plays a witty “right-hand man” to the town’s Irish mob leader. Unlike the book, the main character starts out as being one of the thugs. He lies, cheats and eventually murders. The Continental Op’s main goal throughout the first half of the story was to solve a murder and clean up the slum-ish Personville. Towards the end of the book the Continental Op fears that he might become like the men he hunts down, but never does he truly become one of the gangsters. Tom Reagan in Miller’s Crossing is a conniving, greedy mobster who eventually finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like the characters, the plot for the majority was dissimilar to Red Harvest, too!! Tom Reagan wasn’t a detective trying to solve a murder…he wasn’t even a detective!

Although I thought the movie and book were completing different, I still really like Miller’s Crossing. I had actually already see the movie before, but didn’t recognize the title. And unlike before, I had only seen it half way because I was tired of my dad having to explain the plot to me every 5 minutes. Watching it for the second time, I finally understood the movie! This might be in part because of already reading Red Harvest and mentally preparing myself for the con-jumbled up character alliances, or just because I tried harder to follow along. Either way, thumbs up to the combo of “Red-Crossing.”

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