The great gangster films of the thirties were firmly set in the
Depression at a time when, economically, the country had basically gone
down the tubes and when, in the sixties, movies like "Bonnie and Clyde"
and "Thieves like us" revived the genre they, too, acknowledged that
criminals didn't always commit crime for power or profit but just to
survive. Andrew Dominik's sublime "Killing them Softly" is set in the
America of the economic melt-down that saw out the Bush years and
saw in Obama's presidency and money, taking it, keeping it, getting it
whatever way you can, is again at the heart of the picture, (and both
Bush and Obama figure prominently throughout on any available television
screen).
It begins when
small-time hood Johhny Amato hires a couple of drugged-up, spaced-out
and even smaller-time hoods Frankie and Russell to hold up a card-game
run by Markie Trattman who had previously organized the robbery of
another of his own games. But while they get away with the money things
start going wrong for them very early. In no time hit-man Jackie Cogan
is hunting them down and never mind the collateral damage.
Written and directed by Dominik, who also gave us that great elegiac western "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", "Killing them Softly" may be the first great gangster film to come out of the current economic recession. It's based on the novel "Cogan's Trade" by George V Higgins, who also wrote "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" all those years ago, (this, too, was written some time ago and updated by Dominik), and talk, really good talk of the kind the movies used to give us a lifetime ago, is as vital to the film as the several spectacularly executed killings, one filmed in slow-motion showing the bullet leaving the gun before crashing, first through a car window and then through the victim's skull. And talk of this quality needs good talkers to carry it off and it gets them in the ensemble of Brad Pitt, James Gandolfino, Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta, Vincent Curatola and two brilliant, relative new faces in Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn as the bubble-headed robbers. Indeed this may be the best thing Pitt has ever done and in a just world Gandolfino should be clearing space for his Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Come to think of it, this may be the best film I have seen so far this year; yes, it really is that good.
Written and directed by Dominik, who also gave us that great elegiac western "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", "Killing them Softly" may be the first great gangster film to come out of the current economic recession. It's based on the novel "Cogan's Trade" by George V Higgins, who also wrote "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" all those years ago, (this, too, was written some time ago and updated by Dominik), and talk, really good talk of the kind the movies used to give us a lifetime ago, is as vital to the film as the several spectacularly executed killings, one filmed in slow-motion showing the bullet leaving the gun before crashing, first through a car window and then through the victim's skull. And talk of this quality needs good talkers to carry it off and it gets them in the ensemble of Brad Pitt, James Gandolfino, Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta, Vincent Curatola and two brilliant, relative new faces in Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn as the bubble-headed robbers. Indeed this may be the best thing Pitt has ever done and in a just world Gandolfino should be clearing space for his Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Come to think of it, this may be the best film I have seen so far this year; yes, it really is that good.
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