It just occurred to me, twenty years too late, that this is a heist picture.

It has always baffled me in terms of its structure, always remaining a little bit outside of the Coens repetoire, unclassifiable, even though it's always been one of my top three Coen films. It's clearly a comedy, sure, but what is it structurally? It's not a domestic comedy, although it contains elements of that, and it's not a noir, although it contains elements of that too.

No, it's a heist picture. The baby is the Maltese Falcon, the thing everyone's after, the thing that will change the lives of everyone who touches it, the "stuff that dreams are made of."

It's got all the elements of a classic heist picture: corrupt cops, three-time losers, escaped convicts, desperate criminals, crosses, double-crosses, snitches, betrayers, hotheads, even a shotgun-wielding maniac.

Now I realize that the place the Coens started was, "Hey, what if we did a heist picture, and instead of suitcase full of diamonds (or Ving Rhames's soul), it was a baby?"

For whatever reason, when the ending comes along and Nicolas Cage goes into his dream, and we see little Nathan Jr. growing up, it always makes me sob like a little girl.