Review of Killing Them Softly (2012) by Andrew S — 08 Nov 2014

Brilliant, but potentially polarizing, with it's bleak, remote, coldly cynical attitude and remorseless tone, killing them softly can be hard to like, and probably the sort of film that needs to be watched at least more than once to be properly digested, it's in many ways the first "Hope Fades" movie made by Hollywood, a gangster story told amidst the economical collapse of the 2008 credit crunch as the reelections are going on, it's about not so much the decay of the American dream but the American sense of worth, or self, set in an all too real world were even being dishonest gets you nowhere, were even the criminal underworld is feeling the effects of the depression.

This is a deeply pessimistic film that shows a country and a system decomposing, almost literally, the entire film has a grey, grime covered, garbage swept, rotting feel. Sure sometimes it hammers it's message home too bluntly, every tv in the movie is playing footage of the presidential elections and images of Obama or George Bush giving speeches with the volume blaring, it's pretty heavy handed with it, but in many ways there's no point being subdued, the movie's plot is it's message, it's right there for all to see, there's nothing really metaphorical or allegorical about the films approach.

It's a hard, harsh look at America's loss of it's sense of value in every sense, and a grimly sobering reminder that the glowing dreams and promises of the Obama administration have yielded nothing, and the nation that never learns is not just in the same place it ever was, it's in a significantly worse one, and there's no going back.

Killing Them Softly is about "the death of America".