Generally speaking, most gangster movies are designed to
romanticize the criminal lifestyle. As you may recall from earlier this year,
in my review for “Lawless” I stated that gangster movies are wish fulfillment
fantasies that parody the capitalist ideals of the American dream. But what if
there isn’t an American dream anymore? What if the capitalist ideal has failed?
In lieu of our recent economic disaster, how does it affect the gangster
genre? With his second film “Killing
Them Softly”, Director Andrew Dominik--who has previously brought us the
art-western-biopic, “The Assassination of Jesse James”--presents a particularly
bleak vision of the world of crime, where even the criminals aren’t left with
much to steal.
Crucially,
Dominik sets this film in 2008, during the point in American politics when our
economy had officially collapsed, just as we were transitioning from Bush to
Obama, and the words hope and change were being thrown around a lot. This is referenced all throughout the film, as
every radio and television is tuned to news reports about the weakened state of
Wall Street, election debates, and now-famous victory speeches. Though the general plot of the film has
nothing to do with these events, Dominik constantly juxtaposes these political
sound-bites with stock genre moments as they occur.
The
actual plot itself is rather simple. Two low-level criminals (Scoot McNairy and
Ben Mendelson) decide to rob a local gambling ring, knowing that the first
finger to be pointed will be at the organizer of the game (Ray Liotta), who has
bragged about stealing from his own ring once before. Not long after, a world-weary mercenary (Brad
Pitt) is called in by the wise guys in charge.
One of which (James Gandolfini) is held up; drunk in a shoddy hotel
room, after his wife has just kicked him out.
Not
only does this movie tell you that crime doesn’t pay, it tells you that crime
doesn’t pay very well. Nobody is dressed to the gills, no scene takes place in
a fancy Italian restaurant, and nobody seems to be having a very good time. The vision that Dominik creates here, is one
of the gangster lifestyle as a frustrating, nine to five job. Though the
heavy-handed messaging may come off as a bit on-the-nose and overly persistent,
I feel as though this is (just barely) excused by a very well delivered final
monologue from Brad Pitt, who gives another effortless, yet nuanced
portrayal.
All of
the performances are exceptional. In casting Liotta and Gandolfini, Dominik
immediately evokes their fictional criminal pasts from “Goodfellas” and HBO’s
long-running series, “The Sopranos”, only to subvert those preconceptions with
this film, by showing them as weak, whiny, and ineffectual. What is at odds
with the naturalistic acting--and with the movie as a whole, to some extent--
is the overly flowery, overly present, dialogue. Because the movie is aiming
for a grounded reality, when the characters are mopey and complaining, I was on
board, but when they are trying to be funny or clever, it never really rings as
true.
Basically
this is a film that doesn’t want to wow you or win you over, and for most
people it probably won’t. It gives you the violent, gangster goods, but it gets
all that meaty genre stuff out of the way, in favor for giving you the thematic
veggies. Though I was never sure while watching it, I think I liked “Killing
Them Softly”. I think I liked that it was kind of boring, and I think I liked
that the characters talked a lot but never really say much. Concurrently, even if
the themes are beaten within an inch of the movies life, I think liked that it
at least had something to say.
Grade: B -
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2012
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