Cinemablographer: Silent but Deadly

Killing Them Softly

(USA, 97 min.)

Written and directed by Andrew Dominik

Starring: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Vincent Curatola, Ray Liotta.

Brad Pitt as Jackie Cogan in Killing Them Softly. Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon

[To the tune of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly”]

Numbing my brain with his slowness
Draining my life with his words
Killing them softly with his film
Killing them softly, with his film
Taking my whole life, with his words
Killing them softly… with his film. [do do do doooo]

I heard he made a good film
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see it
To watch it for a while
And there it was this dull dud
A stranger to my eyes

Numbing my brain with his subtext
Draining my life with his words
Killing them softly with his film
Killing them softly, with his film
Taking my whole life, with his words
Killing them softly… with his film.

I felt all flushed with ennui
Embarrassed with the crowd
I felt it found the message
And read each one out loud
I prayed that it would finish
But it just kept right on…

[Sound of radio dial changing stations. Fade in to a broadcast of George W. Bush talking about the economy.]

Killing Them Softly is silent but deadly. It builds slowly and methodically, but finishes rather strong. Killing Them Softly is also silent but deadly in the flatulent sense: it makes little noise and it stinks.

The film is a disappointing reteaming of Brad Pitt and writer/director Andrew Dominik after their phenomenal 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. After rewriting the book on the classic western, it only seems appropriate that Dominik brings his impressive style to the western’s closest relative: the gangster film. Like Jesse James, Killing Them Softly is an anomaly in meticulously crafted narrative. It builds story and character at a snail’s pace—Brad Pitt’s tough enforcer Jackie Cogan doesn’t even appear until well past the twenty-minute mark. However, the wealth of exposition doesn’t work as well as it did before, even though Dominik infuses the opening act with stylish flair, which includes a riveting robbery sequence in which low-level thugs Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) knock off a poker operation run by a mobster (Ray Liotta). Once the film moves forward with the heist and the rest of the underworld decides that Frankie, Russell, and their employer Johnny Amato (Vincent Curatola) need to be whacked in order to alleviate the crippling debt they’ve caused, Killing Them Softly feels aimless and directionless, as if it’s searching for a point that doesn’t really need to be made.

The sluggish simmer ultimately becomes dull and tedious because Dominik hammers in the allegory of the narrative without a hint of subtlety. The gangster genre has always evoked parallels of the violent nature of the American dream ever since Little Caesar tried to be somebody but instead wound up lying dead in the gutter, and Killing Them Softly is no exception. As Jackie Cogan corrects the balance of the underworld’s economic collapse, the film has unmistakable parallels with the breakdown of financial institutions that made bad bets and saw the losses spill debt onto the lower tiers of society. There are enough relevant counterpoints for a budding film student to flesh out a decent essay on the continuity of the gangster genre and reveal how the gangster portrays mutations of the American dream along with the rises and falls of the economy.

Killing Them Softly becomes almost insufferable, though, with how incessantly Dominik pairs significant moments with on-the-nose archival snippets of then-President Bush and now-President Barack Obama discussing the economy and the corresponding downturn of American life. “Redistribution of wealth,” says Dubya as his speech fades in on C-span during the high stakes robbery. It seems a bit too farfetched (or Tarantino-esque) that ever single hoodlum, no matter how base he may seem, is tuned into American talk radio or CNN at every single moment of every single robbery, hit, and/or meeting that goes down. Each instance of criminal activity unleashes a floodgate of talking heads noting the decay of America, even though the crumbling grey surroundings of the town in which the film is set would have conveyed the point strongly enough. The film is too much transparent for one to appreciate the work at hand.

Killing Them Softly redeems itself somewhat with the strength of its final act. After a bizarre midsection with a martini-guzzling, whore-spanking James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt’s Cogan resumes his trade of hunting down the bumbling criminals. The starkly violent final arc explodes with some unexpected plot turns and a spot-on endnote, which works quite well even though it’s delivered against an American flag and a television projecting the newly elected Obama promising change. The bleakness and darkly humorous cynicism of the ending are sold especially well by Brad Pitt’s imposing performance as the film’s ruthless enforcer. It’s another notable turn by Pitt in a long string of strong work. Pitt’s jovial, yet brooding performance hints that Killing Them Softly could have delivered as strongly as Jesse James did if only its subtext was not delivered as inelegantly as buckshot dispensed from a sawed-off shotgun.

Rating: ★★½ (out of ★★★★★)

Killing Them Softly is currently playing in wide release.

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12/04/2012

Silent but Deadly