Andrew Dominik’s meaty, vigorous and suitably violent third feature will have fans of the gritty low-level gangster genre just about satisfied mainly due to its cast of top-shelf performers. Brad Pitt is the devilishly cool, cynical enforcer brought in by the mob lawyer Richard Jenkins to ‘take care of’ bottom feeding junkie chancers Ben Mendelson and Scoot McNairy who stick up a mob-sponsored Ray Liotta card game. James Gandolfini is sub-contracted as a way beyond his prime trigger man with a penchant for hookers and booze, who locates the central core of the films narrative depth showing the very human side-effects of the life of the hitman in a recession hit America. As with all the characters in Dominik’s stylishly dark tragi-comedy their displays of incompetence, frustrations and survival instincts serve more as metaphors than in upholding the narrative arc. It’s essentially a very simple rub-out procedurual film, but made profoundly colourful and poignant through the reworking of George V Higgins’ 1974 crime novel Cogan’s Trade by repositioning it in an America on the verge of transition from Bush to Obama and in throes of economic decline, showing that even the mob suffers just like any other business but must like America carrying on operating.
While superficially taking a modest bow to many genre pieces, notably from the era which inspired the novel, the film is rendered in grimy sparse tones and settings, its general mood and structure however owes something not to the cinema of the 70’s, but finds a closer emotional connection with some of the great recent work of TV, notably from the HBO stable. Is there not a surviving legacy of real tragedy from The Wire, The Sopranos and most recently found in Boardwalk Empire that finds itself rehabilitated in the characters of Killing Them Softly? Are they not the same desperate pawns displaying the human frailties in the larger, vast world that pits them eventually against each other? That world of Capitalism. Perhaps seen in this context, then the overt and over emaphasized use of election campaign broadcasting and financial disaster news stories blaring out on TVs which regularly interrupts the film becomes ever so meaningful. Are they not like actual commercial breaks themselves? Yet this structural device, which Dominik takes a huge risk on, is perhaps also the films achilles heel. Rather than serving as aids in the narrative structure helping to solidify the characters position they unfortunately come across as their intended ideological devices rendering them ineffective against the anger, in particular and most importantly in Pitt’s pragmatic reading of the situation. He rightly calls bullshit on America and the Presidency itself (about time). And thankfully for us too, Pitt, with a superbly pitch perfect turn, rescues the film from this structural quagmire but it’s too little too late.
Some good old fashion Raging Bull style bloody beatings and vitriolic rage finally convinces that Dominik has the right engaging touch for aggressive masculine film making but he is way short on the sublime use of ideology. Perhaps it might work as a TV series?
Killing Them Softly is in cinemas 21st September.
Director: Andrew Dominik
Stars: Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins
Runtime: 97 min
Country: USA
Film Rating: 
