Cogan: Killing Them Softly

I really enjoyed this little gem. Dark humour at its best. Set in a gritty declining USA. Mobsters and hitmen doing business to make ends meet. The entire cast is terrific. Low key, understated and perfect.

A really enjoyable little gem!

The idea of film being used as a medium for political themes and socio-economic commentary is nothing new, even recently with films such as Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Margin Call aiming to tackle the 2008 financial crisis. But few films have been as unsubtle as Killing Them Softly. Set to the backdrop of the 2008 election, the criminal underworld of an American city has been hit by its own financial crisis after a mob poker game is robbed by two criminals (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn). With no trades or money being moved, a mob manager (Richard Jenkins) brings in a fixer, Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), to solve the situation. But none of his actions brings back confidence, whether right or wrong. Writer/director Andrew Dominik admirably uses a gangster story as a metaphor for the financial crisis, but the handling was atrocious. Dominik has no faith in his audience to draw these connections, and even worse, come away with its own conclusions; he opts to spoon-feed us the cliff notes as we watch. This is most evident with the constant use of speeches by George W. Bush and Barack Obama made at time, enforcing the parallels Dominik wanted to make. There are constant references to terminology used at the time, particularly the theme of bringing back confidence to the world, the theme that public perspective is more important than actual actions and we are reminded that the gangster world's situation is the same as the financial world's one. This forceful approach does not allow us to see a natural story. Killing Them Softly is a very dialogue-driven film that breaks the old cinematic maxim of "show, don't tell." We are told that the mob has turned corporate and that there is a crisis, but we do not get to see it. It would have been more interesting to see mob bosses arguing and coming up with theories and seeing that gangsters were unwilling to make any deals in the midst of the crisis. Killing Them Softly ends up rather dull as a result. There are some moments that show what Dominik is capable of: the robbery scene was filled with tension and things felt like they would actually kick off. Whenever violence was used in general, it was incredibly grim and brutal. There is a highly stylised moment when Cogan commits his first assassination, completely played out in slow motion — a brilliant little sequence. The film hits hardest in these scenes. The big saving grace of Killing Them Softly is the acting. There is a great cast with Pitt, Jenkins and James Gandolfini being the biggest draws. They were committed actors doing the best they could, elevating the dry material provided with excellent delivery and chemistry. Pitt and McNairy played the most likable (and I use that term loosely) characters, and were the most well-drawn and conflicted characters in the film. McNairy was the most human, reacting naturally to his situation, and Pitt is able to be cold-hearted and professional when he acts upon his deadly task. Killing Them Softly is a film that feels its political parallels are enough of a mask for it to be seen as an intelligential masterpiece, but it feels too demeaning to have everything spelled out like that, which was made worse given the story played second fiddle to these political parallels. There was potential for a great film if there was a good re-write, but it ends up being one of biggest disappointments of 2012.

Killing Them Softly (2012)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Three idiot, wannabe thieves rob a mob run cards game and make off with a ton of cash. Then Jackie (Brad Pitt), a hit-man, is called in to figure out who was behind the robbery and to take care of them. KILLING THEM SOFTLY is being called by many a masterpiece and by many others as one of the worst films of the year. I think most people are really going to hate this film because it's just so different from other stuff out there but I'm going to fall somewhere in the middle of the two groups. While I enjoyed the style and the performances, at the same time the film just takes way too long to really get to where it's going and there are some other questionable things that I'll comment on in a bit. What I did like about the picture is that it's pretty brutal and ugly in regards to its violence and characters. The film really doesn't show any of the characters in a good light as the "good" guys are bad and the bad guys are really bad. There's never an attempt to make you connect with these people or enjoy what they're doing. The film also benefits from some wonderful characters actors. Pitt, James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendlesohn and Ray Liotta all fit their roles nicely and deliver very good performances. This is especially true of Gandolfini and Liotta. The problem with the picture is that it just has way too many moments where things seem to really get dragged out. Another major problem is that the film tries to be too much like Tarantino. The scenes early one with the two thieves talking dirty about a wide variety of objects is just going to remind people of PULP FICTION. The dialogue here offers up some funny stories but it's not good enough to really grab one and bring them into the picture. KILLING THEM SOFTLY certainly has a unique look and feel to it but in the end it adds up to very little. The Bush-Obama bits of dialogue thrown in throughout the movie also add up to a big nothing, although I'm guessing the point was that even low-life criminals have bit hurt by the economy.

Watching Killing Them Softly put me in mind of the great crime caper film of the Seventies, Charley Varrick. That's the one where Walter Matthau and some accomplices pull off a bank heist in a small out of the way bank in an obscure New Mexico town. Only the bank is a place where syndicate money is held and laundered. Joe Don Baker is the hit-man sent after them and he loves his work. Fortunately at least for Walter Matthau he's smart enough to outwit Baker. Killing Them Softly has no Matthau among the targets as the tale is told from hit-man's point of view.

The hit-man or at least one of them is Brad Pitt and he gets no pleasure in his work, it's a business like any other. He wants to be well compensated for his services. In fact he wants to Kill Them Softly which to him means taking them out with a rifle with scope because he doesn't want to hear their pleadings. Or by surprise in one case where everyone knows its coming, but the victim.

Two real criminal losers Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy are hired by Vincent Curatola to rob an illegal gambling establishment run by Ray Liotta. With Liotta you can see a bit of his Henry Hill from Goodfellas, with Hill running just this kind of place as he headed into middle age in the mob.

The reason for this target is that several years earlier Liotta ripped his own card game off, but eventually was forgiven when the gambling started booming again. Curatola is sure the mob will look right at Liotta again. Not that they don't look at Liotta again, but they're smarter than that. They always are.

Once the caper goes down in comes Pitt, but also with a few competitors, James Gandolfini being one. That's where Pitt starts negotiating his deal.

Brad Pitt gives a good performance here, but for me the real stars are McNairy and Mendelsohn. You will rarely losers with a capital "L" portrayed on the screen as they are with these two. In a way they ought to be put out of their misery for their own good. Still you feel sorry for them somewhat.

Interesting mob movie with some deep black comic overtones.

Andrew Dominik's third feature is an interesting, often entertaining but also frustrating crime thriller which reunites the Australian film-maker with Jesse James star Brad Pitt. The film features severe brutality and wonderful performances but the elements that should have stayed in the subtext are beaten into the audience as much as much the hapless characters.

Adapted from George V. Higgins' novel and set in New Orleans against the back drop of the Wall Street Banking Crisis and the 2008 Presidential election, Killing them Softly is a crime thriller with a socio-economic message not so much on its sleeve but carved on its forehead. Scoot McNairy (Monsters) and Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in The Dark Knight Rises) play two naïve crooks who agree to rob a Mob-protected high stakes poker game for a local small time gangster named the Squirrel (The Sopranos' Vincent Curatola). The bosses suspect Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), the game's manager who is more guilty for his negligence than his complicity. Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), an efficient and clinical hit man is brought in by a mysterious lawyer (the ever great Richard Jenkins) - with connections to an unidentified network of authorities inside and out of the underworld - to clean up the entire mess.

Dominik seems to relish in deconstructing audiences perceptions of gangster-genre veterans such as James Gandolfini, Curatola, and Liotta. The three are somewhat weak characters who are simply small fish in a very big and dangerous pond. Liotta particularly is a quivering, cowering tragic character – completely removed from the swagger he exemplified in Goodfellas. Gandolfini too retains some of his magnetic threatening persona but he is a hit man with a broken heart and a broke n liver from his alcoholism and penchant for prostitutes. The rest of the supporting cast is superb with Sam Shephard, Richard Jenkins and Slaine (seen in Ben Affleck's The Town and Gone Baby Gone) all delivering strong but all-to-brief contributions to the film. Pitt is maintaining his consistency with another confident and compelling performance. He imbues Cogan with empathy – exemplified by his tact of assassinating his targets "softly" – yet he is direct and unyielding in his objectives. His speech at the climax of the movie set against Barack Obama's election victory speech is electrifying and among Pitt's finest work.

Killing them Softly is a violent film. The beatings are rough and severe and you feel every punch – every broken tooth, every crack in the jaw, every smashed nose. The gunshots are loud and frightening. The gangster life is in no way romantic or glamorous. It's a kill or be killed environment and those who hesitate to be ruthless and driven in their mission are victims. It's a Darwinian environment where "hope" and "change" are just words printed on dilapidated billboards.

The plot of the film is very simple but Dominik rather slows down the action and focus on the characters. It's almost surprising the film ends when it does as one does not know what to expect or where the story is heading. There is an uncertainty in the pacing of the film that is quite apparent. Furthermore, rumours that Dominik's original cut was 2 and half hours (the finished film is a brisk 97 minutes) give weight to the belief that Dominik had much more ambitious plans. It's easy to speculate about the reasons for such a massive cut to footage (studio pressure perhaps) but Dominik seems to mistrust his audience to "get" the sub textual themes and motifs. It's painfully apparent that the heist and subsequent fallout is an allegory for the Economic Crisis and the cutthroat crime underworld is not dissimilar to corporate America. Dominik doesn't believe in understated or subtlety but Killing them Softly is an entertaining ride nonetheless. One cannot help ponder whether this film was destined for something much, much more.