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

Lawless Review

John Hillcoat’s middle name could be Bleak. John Bleak Hillcoat. He has made his name over the past few years directing the hugely successful The Proposition, a violent and meditative film about criminals and lawmen in the Australian Outback and The Road, an adaptation of the novel by Cormac McCarthy which follows a father and son making their way across a post-apocalyptic America. His latest effort, Lawless, captures that same feeling of bleakness and, in many ways, desperation, that his characters regularly seem to battle with, but in a much lighter manner.

Lawless, which sees him team up again with musician Nick Cave, who wrote the screenplay for The Proposition and does so here, tells the story of the Bondurant brothers – Howard (Jason Clarke), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf) – who make and sell moonshine liquor in Franklin County, Virginia, during the Prohibition period. They don’t have a lot but they get by – they have no other option. Things are going pretty well until a special agent from out-of-town, Charley Rakes (Guy Pearce), turns up with the intention of clearing house.

Something that becomes evident as the film goes on is the fact that it feels like it’s trying to be The Godfather (tropes include Jack as the youngest trying to take more responsibility with his brothers denying him a la Michael Corleone and the prologue and epilogue designed to give the film the feel of an epic), but it isn’t anywhere near the length it needs to be for an epic like that and as a result it comes in overlong in terms of the length it perhaps should have been. We follow Forrest and Jack’s dalliances with two women, Maggie (Jessica Chastain) and Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) respectively and, while the two actresses perform well, neither needed to be in the film and neither gets enough screen time to make anything like the impression we know they can. This is a man’s world, where violence is king, and the addition of women seems not only forced but slows the pacing down too far – this could have been a punchy eighty-five or ninety minutes but clocks in just shy of two hours. Things aren’t helped by the addition of Gary Oldman as big-town gangster Floyd Banner – as good as he is and although his addition helps to resolve a couple of plot points, they’re not so big that they couldn’t have been resolved in a different way and, as a result, his scenes only serve to bloat the film unnecessarily.

When things remain focussed on the conflict between the Bondurants and Charley Rakes, things take a turn for the better. Hardy as the stoic, monosyllabic Forrest is both menacing in his demeanour and endearing in his quiet longing for Maggie, while Pearce’s effeminate glove-wearing appearance and tittering, quick-to-anger performance makes Rakes both pantomime villain and threatening adversary. Forrest acts as the only thing standing between Rakes and his brothers, the young and cocky Jake and the moonshine-addled Howard and whenever he’s out of the picture, Rakes usually makes someone suffer – it’s clear that the Bondurants have no other choice than to run bootleg moonshine across county, and either them or Rakes will have to go. Regardless of what we’re seeing, Hillcoat frames it beautifully and injects humour into situations we normally wouldn’t find funny as a method of getting us to root for characters we normally wouldn’t dream of rooting for.

Although it wanted to be a slow-burning gangster epic, Lawless ultimately comes in too short to achieve its aims, and in the process becomes too long to act as a quick, violent snapshot of a violent period. Redeemed by Hillcoat’s direction and the performances of Chastain, Hardy and Pearce, this is at least an example of a film that reached for greatness and fell short, rather than a film that didn’t even get off the launch pad.

3.5/5

Anna Karenina Review

One of literature’s greatest novels adapted for the screen with nods to Baz Luhrmann, Bertold Brecht and Constantin Stanislavski? It sounds unnatural – the three are not natural bedfellows (especially not Brecht and Stanislavski, as any student of drama can attest to), but they come together to dazzling effect in Joe Wright and Sir Tom Stoppard’s absorbing and exciting version of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which succeeds in its quest to become so much more than just another costume drama.

The 800-900 page novel, depending on which version you have, tells the story of Anna (Keira Knightley), a socialite in her late twenties who is seemingly contentedly married to an intensely moral high-ranking government official, Karenin (Jude Law). Her life, and Russian society as a whole, however, is thrown into chaos when she meets and falls for a dashing young cavalry officer, Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Although the novel discusses everything from agricultural processes to balls and hunting parties and has several subplots involving Levin (Domhnall Gleeson), Kitty (Alicia Vikander), Kitty’s sister Dolly (Kelly Macdonald) and her husband Oblonsky (Matthew Macfayden) who ALSO happens to be Anna’s brother, Stoppard’s screenplay does a remarkable job of compressing their various attitudes, actions and relationships into a 130-minute running time.

 
Director Wright, who made his name with period adaptations Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, which both starred Knightley, was obviously wary of treading the same path again, and the decision he made to set almost the entire film in a run-down theatre is a bold, inspired and ironic one, considering that Tolstoy generally hated the theatre. It makes several appearances in the novel as a place where the upper-set gathers to socialise as much as watch the acting or operatic performances, and here it highlights the artificiality (much of the Russian nobility’s manners and conventions were learnt from the French) and disloyalty of their lives, notably in a ball scene where the women silently and audibly judge Anna behind her back for her carrying on with Vronsky – because she “broke the rules”, she must be cast out of her social circles. At other times throughout the film, backdrops rise, people scurry about in the wings and above the stage, extras on a dancefloor freeze in place as Anna and Vronsky whirl through and around them in one of Wright’s signature long takes and, indeed, his direction throughout the first third of the film as the scenes are set is filled with verve and style, tapering off as the plot progresses. However, although there is much to admire, the technique nevertheless has the effect of distancing the viewer and keeping them at arm’s length – perhaps it is its intention that we identify with Levin, the only character we see leaving the theatre to return home to his land and in search of a “real” life.

We focus, then, on the performances, which are as naturalistic as we have come to expect. At the risk of sounding unfair given that most of the character development and changes are described internally rather than externally in the novel, Knightley, tasked with conveying the variety of emotions and conflicts that Anna experiences over its course, does her best but just falls short. Taylor-Johnson, who was fantastic in his breakthrough, Nowhere Boy, as John Lennon, has been rather underwhelming since, and his Vronsky comes across as an arrogant, conceited schoolboy (which is more or less how he comes across in real life) rather than a charming, Rhett Butler-esque cad. When the two need you to be moved, they ultimately fail and, for a film presenting itself as a love story, this is fatal. Law, Macdonald, Vikander, Gleeson and Macfayden are far better, the first four providing levity (with Gleeson’s gradually-blossoming relationship with Vikander far more touching than that between Anna and Vronsky), while Macfayden performs well as the film’s comic relief.

Although Knightley and Taylor-Johnson make for an unconvincing central pair, the skill of the supporting cast coupled with Tom Stoppard’s almost flawless script as well as Joe Wright’s daring and innovative directorial decisions make this a whirlwind, intoxicating adaptation of Anna Karenina.

4/5