Killing Them Softly is a slick film about grimy people. It’s occasionally brilliant, and features performances that are practically earmarked for Best Actor Oscar consideration. But it’s also sloppily edited to the point of head-scratching incompetence — you’re just as likely to be talking about the visual gaffes when you walk out of the film as you might be about any of the actors or scenes. And the script, adapted by director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) from George V. Higgins’s novel Cogan’s Trade, is heavy-handed in the extreme in terms of tone and message. Dominik clearly has an axe to grind here, and beating that message into his audience takes precedence over telling a compelling, coherent narrative.
As many of these kinds of movies do, Killing Them Softly starts with a bad idea: robbing a card game run by the mob. Well, how do you get away with that? Simple, says “Squirrel” (Vincent Curatola), the brains behind the heist: cast the blame on the guy running the game, Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). Why will the mob believe that Markie rolled his own game? Because he did it before, and confessed to it months later when it was safe to laugh it off among his colleagues. Naturally, he’d be the first suspect if it happened again, right?
To pull of the robbery, Squirrel brings the plan to Frankie (Scoot McNairy), who’s young, broke, and just out of jail, so he’s desperate enough to think it might work. Frankie, in turn, recruits Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), a junkie and would-be dog-napper who’s all bluster and filth, so much so that even other hoods aside from Frankie can’t stand him. He’s hilariously vile – you feel dirty just listening to him talk about anything.
The pair actually pull off the heist without screwing it up and, along with Squirrel, think they’re home free. But their problems are just beginning. The robbery actually manages to crash the local criminal economy, and so the mob, working through a squeamish intermediary (Richard Jenkins), brings in Jackie (Brad Pitt) to restore order, punish the robbers, whoever they are, and send a clear message to future would-be thieves.
Now Jackie’s a cool-headed pro who’s been cleaning up messes like this for a long time; he thinks and acts with efficiency and effectiveness in mind. But the people he’s forced to deal with as he gets further into things here are anything but efficient or effective, and the question soon becomes just how dirty will Jackie’s normally-clean hands get while taking out the trash.
Pitt, with tidily-groomed beard and slick, motionless hair, is effortlessly cool as Jackie. As he is in many of the projects he takes on, he’s impossible not to like; despite his trade and what it compels him at times to do, Jackie thinks of himself as a nice guy, and he’s proud of the fact that he gets results while still being a nice guy. Above all, he’s a professional, and just about the only time you see real frustration cross his features is when others around him don’t act in a similar professional manner. Dealing with the pencilneck the money men have sent as a liaison and a formerly trustworthy colleague, Mickey (James Gandolfini), who’s seems more interested in drowning in booze than working, Jackie gets frustrated a lot.
It should be mentioned that Pitt’s scenes with Gandolfini are particularly riveting, as Gandolfini puts a broken, sad-sack spin on the mobster schtick he’s done many times before. Mickey was a formidable career criminal once, but no longer. Instead, he’s a drunk who’s intent on staying drunk and being abusive to himself or anyone he comes in contact with, and the only time he displays any life or fire is when someone threatens to disrupt his downward spiral. He’s likely to earn a Best Supporting Actor nod for his work here. Too bad he’s only in two scenes and playing a character that, by the end of the film, is rendered pointless.
If Dominik as a director and screenwriter was just interested in telling Jackie’s story, while taking asides to show us Frankie’s nervousness, Russell’s audacious sliminess, and Mickey’s disillusion and despair, then audiences might have been treated to an interesting, engaging wiseguy yarn. But the man who worked with Pitt five years ago on that western with the absurdly long and cumbersome title has an agenda here — in just about every scene, shot on grim, desolate streets, dank alleyways, and dive bars in New Orleans, Dominik fills the background noise with the sounds of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and CNN. You see, this whole caper takes place in the months leading to the 2008 election, in the wake of the nationwide economic collapse and the auto bailout. Dominik want us to see parallels between the actions taken by the U.S. government in terms of those events and the actions of the mob in bringing in Jackie — he wants us to see those parallels so badly that he beats us over the head with them at every turn, right down to Jackie’s final words in the film: “I’m living in America,” he says, more vehement in this moment than any other in the film, ” and in America you’re on your own. America isn’t a country. It’s a business.” Oooh. That’s harsh, man. Original, too.
The cynicism, along with the soundbytes, will serve only to distance you from what’s barely a complete story. In addition, it seems it was more important to Dominik and the film’s editors to get the message across and serve the agenda than it was to pay attention to film continuity — pay close attention during some of the longer dialogues and you’ll see props disappear and reappear at random. All the style and artistry on display in certain scenes — a slo-motion drive-by shooting, a conversation with a junkie told from his point of view as he’s shooting up, just to name a few — is laid low by all the silly continuity mistakes. It’s as though the film’s brain trust was only excited about certain parts of the movie, and the rest they could have cared less about.
It’s truly a waste, of great staging, memorable performances, and, ultimately, of an hour and a half better spent elsewhere.
Score: 2.5 out of 5
Killing Them Softly
Starring Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn. Written for the screen and directed by Andrew Dominik.
Running Time: 97 minutes
Rated R for violence, sexual references, pervasive language, and some drug use.