You see, this is what happens when you do
Chanel No. 5 commercials. Brad Pitt, the star of
director Andrew Dominik's beyond gritty crime thriller
'Killing Them Softly', delivers arguably his finest
performance since '12 Monkeys' damn near twenty years ago, and
nobody goes to see it. I'm thinking that Brad should
have enough fans to push this movie over the break even line,
but then why go see your favorite actor in a movie that isn't
all that flattering towards his beauty when you can see him on
regular TV in awful Chanel No. 5 commercials?
Another reason Brad's fans might've let this one slide could
be because he doesn't show up until about twenty minutes
in. Until then we get to hang out with Frankie (Scoot
McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), a pair of gentlemen we
could call losers… but then that would be giving losers a bad
name. On this particular day Frankie and Russell are
meeting up with dry cleaning operator Penguin (Vincent
Curatola) who has a job for them. It's an easy gig
according to Penguin, but he doesn't trust the greasy, dirty,
smelly Australian Russell. He just knows that Russell is
going to screw things up. My friends, always go with
your first instinct. Always.
The job is to knock over a mob sponsored card game. Even
Frankie, who's not the brightest bulb in the box, knows that
this is an awful idea, but Penguin assures him that they're
safe because of some rigmarole that went down at a card down a
while back and that the dude who runs these card games, Markie
(Ray Liotta) will get the blame. Nice and easy.
So Fankie and Russell pull the job and
it is nice and easy. And Markie does kind of get the
blame. This brings Jackie (Pitt) into the game under the
slippery direction of some odd bureaucratic looking cat who is
only known as The Driver (Richard Jenkins). Simply,
Jackie is a hitman, The Driver is the liaison
between the mob and the hitmen, and he needs Jackie to find
out who did this and eliminate them. The problem being
that the mob has apparently given in to the corporate way of
doing things and as such meetings have to be convened, money
has to be haggled over, decisions have to be sent up the
corporate chain…. It sucks. I'm surprised these mobsters
don't have a 90-day wait pay period for their executioners.
Eventually Jackie finds out who has done this thing, thanks to
Russell, and the job is on. He wanted to toss some work
to the way of his assassin colleague Mickey (James Gandolfini)
but Mickey's priority at this moment in time is to be a
self-pitying, whore-mongering drunk. He's useless.
It's up to Jackie to handle this business all by his lonesome,
which we don't see as too much of a problem because Jackie is
nothing if not professional and efficient, but the corporate
mob micro management manifesto? That'll be death of all
criminal empires if this is allowed to continue. And
they're not getting a bailout.
Personally speaking, I mightily enjoyed Andrew Dominik's
'Killing them Softly'. Almost loved it almost. I
probably would've loved it if the director had stopped bashing
me over the head with his allegorical concepts of the downfall
of America since I did kind of get it rather early, but I
guess he just wanted to be sure I go it. I got it
Andrew, I got it.
Simply judging by the fact that I used the word 'Allegory'
while preparing to describe a gritty mob movie should let you
know that 'Killing them Softly' isn't your typical mob movie
and I could see where this could lead to some disappointment
for some. So while 'Killing Them Softly' is violent,
sometimes shockingly so, the majority of the action consists
of people sitting in cars talking to each other, sitting in
bars talking to each other, sitting in hotels talking to each
other… you get the idea, there's a lot of talking in this
movie.
Ahh… but the words coming out of these actors mouths is so
darned good and the actors that are reciting these words that
are coming out of their mouths are so darned good that, for me
at least, this was almost like watching 'True Lies' or
something with words substituting for explosions and shootouts
and this is where the entertainment value of this film comes
from.
Also, as you can probably tell from the subject matter, this
is one unpleasant movie. The environments are drab, the
sun doesn't shine, these conversations I enjoyed so much are
usually about killing somebody, or stealing from somebody or
killing somebody for stealing from somebody and none of this
miserable atmosphere is lightened by a feminine
presence. There is a woman in the movie, a prostitute
played by Linara Washington, but she's just about as
unpleasant as everybody else in this grim movie, so needless
to say don't enter into this film looking for a positive role
model or searching for your happy place.
Then there are the parallels between depressing violence on
the streets and the white collar oppression being thrust upon
us by the suits in D.C. and Wall Street. I guess we
could surmise that the roles have switched. The mob is
stuck micromanaging their dwindling profits while the true
gangsters on Wall Street continue to rake in profits under the
protection of governmental regulation. It's every man
for himself. We're being sold a bill of goods.
We're being hoodwinked. While I did appreciate the
integration of these two diverging and disparate worlds
merging into a singular topic, I didn't appreciate getting
clubbed to death with it.
Nonetheless I am a sucker for a crime drama with good dialog
and great acting. 'Killing Them Softly' gave me that and
maybe added in a little extra that I'm thinking I could've
done without, but an enjoyable experience all the same.
