Killing Them Softly Review

From Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner in Prizzi’s Honor and Jean Reno in Leon to Max and Al from The Killers and John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank, hitmen (and women) are an iconic and, some would argue, overused cinematic trope. They’re either psychopaths or wisecrackers, highly efficient or utterly incompetent, believable or unbelievable. How many more different ways can they be represented on screen? This is the challenge faced by Andrew Dominik when he came to adapt the 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade by George V. Higgins, which has now made it to the screen in a production entitled Killing Them Softly.

Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) are two small-time hoods recruited by slightly-bigger-but-still-small hood, Johnny the Squirrel (Vincent Curatola) to rob a Mob-protected card game run by Markie (Ray Liotta). It goes off without a hitch so the Mob, represented by its mouthpiece lawyer (Richard Jenkins), turns to Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), one of the Mob’s enforcers, to track them down.

It’s a simple plot and, given that there are no major surprises or twists at any point during the film, it has to work hard to hold our attention, and it mainly succeeds in doing so through dialogue and direction. The establishment of Frankie and Russell and their scenes together after the heist (including a memorable interaction where Frankie desperately tries to find out how much information Russell has unwittingly given away while he nods off on heroin) allows opportunities for black comedy, while the heist itself, which involves Frankie trying to control a room full of undoubtedly armed men with nothing but a sawn-off shotgun, is nailbitingly tense. A dragging middle section featuring two lengthy scenes between Pitt and James Gandolfini (not the fault of either actor – the script and staging let them down), who plays Mickey, a booze-addled, hooker-addicted killer brought in by Cogan to take care of one of the targets, is saved by a triumphant final third featuring a stunning performance by McNairy.

What attempts to elevate Killing Them Softly above the heights attainable by a mere hitman/gangster flick is the social commentary that permeates it throughout. Rather than follow the novel and set in the 1970s, Dominik, who is a director rapidly gaining a reputation for creativity and ingenuity following his previous two films Chopper and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, has chosen to juxtapose the lives and financial struggles of these low-to-mid level crooks (going against the grain of the opulence demonstrated in the likes of The Sopranos and Goodfellas) against the 2008 banking crisis – the faceless suits represented by Jenkins’s lawyer are forced to be every bit as cautious and careful with their money as the banks should have been. Cogan is cynical when watching speeches of Barack Obama promising that the economy will get better and the audience, with the benefit of hindsight, sympathises with him. What has he got to look forward to? Will he end up like Gandolfini’s Mickey? Or will he eventually end up on the wrong end of a gun with nothing to show for it? Although the film attempts to concern itself with these themes, it cannot strike a good balance – often forgotten about and heavy-handed when remembered, it doesn’t quite work

Dominik’s direction, however, never wavers – one assassination is slowed right down to the point where it looks like a beautifully rendered “bullet time” sequence from a video game, and a key scene between Pitt and McNairy uses a series of close-ups to ramp up the tension again, even though we know what the outcome of the conversation will be. Eventually, like the film as a whole, it can only end in one way.

4/5