Australian director Andrew Dominik made a blistering debut with Chopper in 2000 before the suitably epic and problematic pause before his second feature, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford hit in 2007 – one of my favourite films of the last 10 years.
Never one to rush to his next project, Dominik is back with Killing Them Softly. Again based on existing material, in this case the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade by the late crime author George V. Higgins, it also sees the director once more penning the script and re-teaming with Jesse James lead Brad Pitt.
The script updates the action from the 70s of the novel to run concurrently with the final days of Obama's race for the presidency. His speeches of hope and the potential of the United States are intermingled with a base and grimy tale of two inveterate idiots who devise what they think is an elaborate plan to steal from the mob and frame someone else for the job.
It's this act, and the almost unbearably tense robbery scene, which sets up the rest of the film – forcing Brad Pitt's Jackie to go after those responsible.
Killing Them Softly is a film about death, the necessity of it at the darker edges of the world but also the way in which it can be seen as a mercy. When Jackie is told to rough up a potential culprit, he protests – if they're going to kill him anyway, why put him through the misery of a beating beforehand?
The title itself refers to the hit-man's philosophy on killing – a preference for taking his victims by surprise, sparing them the fear and anguish of facing their mortality.
It's this oblique attitude which sets Killing Them Softly apart from the identikit crime dramas which trickle through cinemas on a yearly basis. There's a humanity here, despite the criminal deeds at hand. Dominik also works hard to pepper the script with humour – some coarse but all adding up to the portrayal of these characters as more than mere engines for exposition and expiration.
Some of the best scenes in the film revolve around Pitt's all too frequent visits to his mob handler, played by Richard Jenkins. As the economic downturn hits, each and every expenditure has to be checked with the committee in charge. Decisions are caught behind walls of bureaucracy, to the embarrassment of Jenkins and frustration of Pitt.
This is Pitt's film through and through, from his superstar entrance accompanied by Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around to the intensity of the finale. Jackie is a somewhat familiar man out of step with his time, disenchanted with the excess and stupidity of the people he has to work with. It's frequently a quiet performance but commanding, projecting the controlled power of the character without ever slipping into cliché.
The small cast is mostly peopled by character actors – Ray Liotta gets more to play with here than he has in years and Sam Shepard barely gets a look in. Jenkins is a delight while James Gandolfini provides some crime family credibility.Next to Pitt, it's the duo of Scott McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn who you'll spend the most time with and they do a great job of toeing the line between being likeably dense yet still expendable. Mendelsohn goes for broke as a grimy antipodean addict and McNairy has the harder role as a character you almost hope will make it.
Dominik forgoes the luminous Oscar nominated photography of Jesse James here in favour of dark and gritty lensing courtesy of Greig Fraser. The deeps blacks and rain wash the film into almost monochrome shades, highlighting the potential glint of a weapon in the darkness. The director also throws a couple of set pieces into the mix, including one heavily trailed hit that is rendered with all the slow motion style of a much bigger film and a visual highlight of the experience.
But Killing Them Softly is not about murder, it's about the miserable fate of the underclass and the cycle of behaviour which keeps them there. It's contrasted again and again (perhaps too heavily) with the hopeful message of Obama amid the collapse of the global economy as the mob, an organisation where money was never an issue, penny pinch in their dealings with life and death.
Andrew Dominik has crafted another classic with Killing Them Softly. More accessible than Jesse James and powered by a commanding performance from Pitt, it mixes dense, dark visuals with a curt humanism that sets it apart from others in the genre.
Never one to rush to his next project, Dominik is back with Killing Them Softly. Again based on existing material, in this case the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade by the late crime author George V. Higgins, it also sees the director once more penning the script and re-teaming with Jesse James lead Brad Pitt.
The script updates the action from the 70s of the novel to run concurrently with the final days of Obama's race for the presidency. His speeches of hope and the potential of the United States are intermingled with a base and grimy tale of two inveterate idiots who devise what they think is an elaborate plan to steal from the mob and frame someone else for the job.
It's this act, and the almost unbearably tense robbery scene, which sets up the rest of the film – forcing Brad Pitt's Jackie to go after those responsible.
Killing Them Softly is a film about death, the necessity of it at the darker edges of the world but also the way in which it can be seen as a mercy. When Jackie is told to rough up a potential culprit, he protests – if they're going to kill him anyway, why put him through the misery of a beating beforehand?
The title itself refers to the hit-man's philosophy on killing – a preference for taking his victims by surprise, sparing them the fear and anguish of facing their mortality.
It's this oblique attitude which sets Killing Them Softly apart from the identikit crime dramas which trickle through cinemas on a yearly basis. There's a humanity here, despite the criminal deeds at hand. Dominik also works hard to pepper the script with humour – some coarse but all adding up to the portrayal of these characters as more than mere engines for exposition and expiration.
Some of the best scenes in the film revolve around Pitt's all too frequent visits to his mob handler, played by Richard Jenkins. As the economic downturn hits, each and every expenditure has to be checked with the committee in charge. Decisions are caught behind walls of bureaucracy, to the embarrassment of Jenkins and frustration of Pitt.
This is Pitt's film through and through, from his superstar entrance accompanied by Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around to the intensity of the finale. Jackie is a somewhat familiar man out of step with his time, disenchanted with the excess and stupidity of the people he has to work with. It's frequently a quiet performance but commanding, projecting the controlled power of the character without ever slipping into cliché.
The small cast is mostly peopled by character actors – Ray Liotta gets more to play with here than he has in years and Sam Shepard barely gets a look in. Jenkins is a delight while James Gandolfini provides some crime family credibility.Next to Pitt, it's the duo of Scott McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn who you'll spend the most time with and they do a great job of toeing the line between being likeably dense yet still expendable. Mendelsohn goes for broke as a grimy antipodean addict and McNairy has the harder role as a character you almost hope will make it.
Dominik forgoes the luminous Oscar nominated photography of Jesse James here in favour of dark and gritty lensing courtesy of Greig Fraser. The deeps blacks and rain wash the film into almost monochrome shades, highlighting the potential glint of a weapon in the darkness. The director also throws a couple of set pieces into the mix, including one heavily trailed hit that is rendered with all the slow motion style of a much bigger film and a visual highlight of the experience.
But Killing Them Softly is not about murder, it's about the miserable fate of the underclass and the cycle of behaviour which keeps them there. It's contrasted again and again (perhaps too heavily) with the hopeful message of Obama amid the collapse of the global economy as the mob, an organisation where money was never an issue, penny pinch in their dealings with life and death.
Andrew Dominik has crafted another classic with Killing Them Softly. More accessible than Jesse James and powered by a commanding performance from Pitt, it mixes dense, dark visuals with a curt humanism that sets it apart from others in the genre.
Tell Your Friends