Review of Killing Them Softly (2012) by Kieran M — 04 Jul 2013

Andrew Dominik's previous film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was a bold and brilliant piece of revisionist history, set in the mythic milieu of the American West.

Killing Them Softly brings the wild west all the way East, transplanting George V.Higgins's 1974 novel Cogans Trade from 70's Boston to modern-day New Orleans. The ruined landscape allows Dominik to evade many of the potential pitfalls of a largely wrung-out gangster genre and transforms a fairly generic (if skillfully composed) crime caper into a cynical, scything parable of post-Katrina, neo-con America.

Without wishing to give too much away. The plot concerns a poker game robbery which two hapless, heroin-using petty criminals are selected to carry out. When the time comes to carry out the deed it's played out in real time with an almost unbearable tension. It's real edge-of-your-seat stuff and turns a slow-burning (but not unwelcome) beginning into rollicking romp through a vast web of criminality and ineptitude.

Ray Liotta, playing against type.

The script is superb, retaining the essence of the source material (Higgins is an acknowledged maestro of dialogue), parcelling out plenty of memorable lines and keeping things pacy. All this gunplay, robbery and backstabbery takes place against the backdrop of the Obama-McCain campaigns, drawing parallels between Big Money US power politics and vicious gangsterism that are never intended to be subtle.

Ben Mendelsohn, not clean.

Scoot.

James Gandolfini.

The cast is simply outstanding, probably career-best work for several of them. Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn stand out as the wastrel protagonists. McNairy, usually a supporting player, carries much of the film on his shoulders and the light of his finely-judged jitteriness sparks beautifully off the dark rock of Pitt's stoicism. Pitt is great, playing the kind of confident almost-bright instigator that has long been a part of his repertoire. Few actors have ever combined grime and stupidity with as much aplomb as Mendelsohn does here, and that he manages to make such a greasy reprobate somehow, sort of likable, is a feat of near-miraculous proportions. Watching this film, you do wonder if Ray Liotta ever questions getting offered so many parts like this. Does he ever stop and think why so many of his films seem to have him being battered, insulted, screwed over and spat on? Does he wonder why people seem to enjoy seeing him play complete and total arseholes who get their comeuppance time and time again? Needless to say he's excellent here too, and I look forward to seeing him get fucked over six ways to Sunday many more times in the future. If you add in James Gandolfini's minor masterpiece as a sad-eyed, sad-sack hitman and a solid Richard Jenkins as a balding corporate middle-manager (in a criminal empire) then Killing Them Softly starts with a deck stacked with potential cliches and fashions something wholly original from it. Whether it's the quality of the actors or the director or both, something here is working very, very well.

Richard Jenkins, in an.

Unfamiliar role.

This is no ordinary gangster movie. In many of the best crime movies, De Niro in Casino for example, or Brando and Pacino in The Godfather, the gangsters are very often principled and efficient, admirable in a completely horrible way. Killing Them Softly takes a different tack entriely, here is as ragged a bunch of emotionally incontinent misfits and losers as you're ever likely to see. There are no heroic or tragic demises, just pathetic and confused ones. These men are idiots and weaklings. Jenkins' talks to his hitmen the way accountants must talk to other accountants, Gandolfini is more hopelessly pathetic here than even the introspective brute Tony Soprano ever was. Brad Pitt, the sole voice of reason, seems to walk through the movie hoping against hope that one of these useless saps will actually do their bloody job properly for once.

This is a work of deep, corrosive cynicism. Killing Them Softly takes a chainsaw to the philosophies that lie at the heart of America, and it's not subtle. As a vision of a ruined and doomed America, it's terrifying. It's also really, really funny, and really really enjoyable, like a hit of petrol black coffee in a cracked and filthy mug. Andrew Dominik deserves to hit it big with this.