Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly

Grade: C-

Directed by: Andrew Dominik

Starring Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta

Killing them by ham-fistedly bludgeoning them to death with an oversimplified theme, is actually the title to this movie. Andrew Dominik must've gotten the words overt, in-your-face, and monotonous confused with subtext, subtlety, and good. It's a baffling, inert, and mostly pointless film that has all the ideas of something that could've been extraordinary. After seeing his (rightly) lauded epic Assasination of Jesse James, where he made a western feel new and interesting, I thought I was in for the same treat for a similarly tired gangster genre. Instead I was given a banal metaphor for petty crime and the american economy, where I can practically hear Dominik screaming from just off camera, "DO YOU GET IT?! DO YOU GET IT?! SEE WHAT I'M DOING HERE?!"

A card game is knocked off in Boston, by some petty thieves who think they're smarter than they are. We are treated to some 15 plus minutes of unnecessary background and exposition to set this up. This robbery is probably the most unpleasant, long, drawn-out, and flat boring robbery I've ever seen on film, it's the antithesis of something like Heat. All the while a presidential candidate is blathering away as the soundtrack, be prepared for this every other scene. Literally. And for shots to come to focus center on a TV, and not the actors, because it's not enough that we're drowning in the words. I also have to look at a TV in my TV of something I wouldn't watch on my TV. Anyway, a mob hitman or fixer is brought in to take care of everyone involved. Enter Brad Pitt. The protagonist (of sorts). Twenty-five (count 'em) minutes into the ninety eight minute film. This is probably where the movie should start since it's the first injection of energy into a dull thus far film.

Unfortunately that energy is immediately wasted by a long drawn out bureaucratic talk with Richard Jenkins who seems to represent the mob as a whole. I get it. It's drab and dull and banal because that's what bureaucracy is like and now the mob is like that and we get it, it's an analogy. That does not make it good entertainment. Or interesting. Or justified. And you come in thinking Pitt is going to get to act, considering Jesse James is his best character and performance on film. Nope. Pitt is rarely the target of the shots, and spends almost the entire movie reacting to less interesting characters. Like Gandolfini's washed up Mickey, who drinks too much and goes on drunken rants, recanting tales of old. Pitt sits looking the way we look. Eyebrows raised in disbelief, that we've been subjected to almost three scenes worth of nothing involving or interesting or relevant, just Gandolfini just rambling.

And if there is a narrative I missed it. I guess he shows up and kills the people. But there isn't any difficulty in doing it. Nor do we feel any particular way about it at all. The only upside to the film is that it has some really brutal violence (though it's unwarranted and seemingly out of place), and a nihilistic feel that makes you wish that was what he was going for instead of political speeches. Dominik also goes over the top with is camera stylings, in particular a scene where a character is high on heroin, and we are treated to the same camera trick over and over so that we get that he's high. Oh and just a few more times, in case you didn't get it. And every character just abruptly leaves. Either killed or just disappears. Like Dominik was writing it and remembered that they were in the story and just needed them gone. 

I'm still startled over just how poorly the whole thing was executed. From conception to completion. It is possible to make a film that skewers your subject matter without in turn becoming your subject matter. If you want to make a scorch-the-earth damnation of the economy and american society, or a nihilistic fuck-all of the gangster genre you can do it without becoming a vacant hole where a movie used to be. The fact is, every movie that has tried to have something to say about the state of things (In Time, Dark Knight Rises) has faltered in doing so. Because they have "tried" to say it, without just making the movie and letting the themes and commentary arise organically. And like it's political figureheads filling the speakers, Killing Them Softly is completely artificial.