Review of Killing Them Softly (2012) by Nesbitt10 — 29 Jan 2013

The characters who die in "Killing them Softly" are ironically or not, not killed softly at all. In fact quite the opposite. Writer-director Andrew Dominik shoots these scenes in the noisiest way possible, employing graphic visuals, super slow motion executions, and shots ringing out so realistically loud-as if you were next to someone with a gun going off at point blank range, straining your eardrums.

Organized crime in America is troubled, just like the rest of the economy with a business slowdown and a growing recession. The film seems to be trying--and failing-- to draw parallels between events unfolding in the film's forefront and the running background narrative of the 2008 financial meltdown and presidential election.

Perhaps if the primary narrative were more coherently developed those parallels would be easier to understand. The plot of "Killing Them Softly" is bare, and straight forward. Three amateurs stickup a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse.

A genial guy named Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta) operates high-stakes poker games for the mob. One night the game is hit by two hooded stick-up men, who make off with a big pile of mob money. This in itself is suspicious, because it looks like an inside job, because who is crazy enough to attempt this brazen act.

A high-level mob boss named Mickey (James Gandolfini) arrives in town and orders the executions of the amateurs by a hit man named Jackie (Brad Pitt), who likes to kill softly and briefly explains why.

These are the first two of many, many mob-on-mob killings in the film. "Killing Them Softly" continues as a dismal, dreary series of cruel and painful murders, mostly by men who know one another, in a barren city where it's usually night and almost always raining.

There is one female character in the film, a hooker employed by Mickey, who is the only mobster not exclusively obsessed with crime or money. As the body count grows, we meet Driver (Richard Jenkins), a gravel-voiced chief executive who appears often behind the wheel of a car parked in the wastelands beneath bridges.

Fine cinematography continues to be one of the hallmarks of Andrew Dominik, but here we feel short changed at its abrupt ending that didn't go anywhere. It did its job in bringing current proceedings to a close, yet opening another door that left it hanging like an unfinished job.

"Killing Them Softly" is a curiously dead movie (pun not intended). It never really gets off the ground and is strangely flat in spite of a generally excellent cast and a premise brimming with tough guy possibilities.