Title: Killing Them Softly
Rating: 5 Stars
This is a film that didn’t get a lot of audience love. The audiences of CinemaScore gave the film a score of F. It’s sitting at a measly 44% on RottenTomatoes. It does do better with the critics. I’d take this even further than the critics. I’ve now seen the film around four times now. It’s one of my favorite films. Amazingly enough, even though I’ve seen it so many times, apparently I’ve never written about it. So here goes.
The film is closely based upon George V Higgins’ novel Cogan’s Trade. If you haven’t read Higgins before, I strongly recommend giving him a try. I call it the tough guys talking tough genre. His novels are populated by career criminals, some successful and most not, as they go about trying to stay alive another day. He has an ear for dialog that gives his characters a grim poetry. Cogan’s Trade is a great novel as a first look at Higgins.
Be forewarned. Killing Them Softly doesn’t even come close to passing the Bechdel Test. In the entire film, there is one credited female role. Her character name is Hooker. This is a man’s world.
Markie (Ray Liotta) runs a card game. Years ago, his card game was robbed. Years later, he laughingly confessed that he actually organized the robbery. Since everyone liked Markie, he was forgiven. Now, Squirrel (Vincent Curatola) has the bright idea of robbing Markie’s game again. Since everyone knows that Markie robbed it the first time, suspicion will necessarily fall upon Markie. He enlists the recent parolee Frankie (Scott McNairy) and perpetually wasted Australian Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) to commit the crime. They successfully do so. The crime syndicate, represented by the attorney simply known as the Driver (Richard Jenkins) contracts with Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) to find the guilty and to kill them. Since multiple people are going to be hit, Cogan arranges to bring another hit man (Mickey, played by James Gandolfini) to help him.
I usually don’t list all of the actors like this. I did so because the film is perfectly cast. Jenkins is perfect as the harried and harassed middle manager. Gandolfini is perfect as the once good hit man that has become completely dissipated and is now useless to Cogan. McNairy and Mendelsohn are both perfect as the not too smart criminal foot soldiers. Liotta is perfect as the personable wiseguy that everyone loves until the robbery puts a huge target on his back. Curatola is perfect as the guy that thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and has designed the perfect crime that falls apart since no one seems able to keep their mouths shut.
The quiet, efficient, almost bored menace of Brad Pitt is at the center of this film. I once read that Pitt is a character actor in a leading man’s body. This is not a huge role. He certainly doesn’t get the girl in the end. He’s no hero. He’s a merciless killer that treats killing just like it’s another day at the office.
Apparently set late in the year 2008, in the background of the film are running news commentaries about the housing crisis and the near collapse of the world economy. You hear bromides from President George W Bush and incoming President Barack Obama. In the foreground you see uncollected garbage, condemned buildings, and a general sense of societal collapse.
This is reflected in the criminal organization. Over time, this organization has become like any other large corporation. Like all middle managers before him, the Driver complains about how bureaucratic the crime syndicate is getting. No one makes any decisions. They balk at Cogan’s rate for murder (including a scene where the Driver explains that $15,000 for a hit in today’s economy is actually a good deal). The Driver cannot understand why Markie needs to be hit until Cogan explains it to him in PR terms. For those of us with painful corporate experience, the conversations between the Driver and Cogan are darkly hilarious.
The dialog, as in the novel, is wonderful. Having not read the novel for some time, I don’t know if the film dialog is taken from the novel. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was. These are tough guys with a sensitive side. Two bruisers are given the task of beating up (not killing) Markie. Before they start, they commiserate with each other that Markie will probably make it hard on them. As they start to beat up Markie and he (understandably) tries to talk them out of it, they whine to Markie that he’s making it hard on them. Even Cogan explains that he doesn’t like it when murder gets ‘touchy-feely’. The soft side of these very hard men makes for great entertainment.
I’m not sure why audiences didn’t like it. Seeing these actors, maybe they expected to see a conventional Scorsese style gangster epic. Instead, you have a bunch of mid to low level functionaries trying to get their job done or maybe get a bit ahead.
This is quite a violet film, but the best part of the film is what happens between the violence.
dorkenstein 