Killing Them Softly Refuses to do Anything Softly

Killing Them Softly Poster

Title: Killing Them Softly
Genre(s): Crime, Drama, Thriller
Director(s): Andrew Dominik
Release Year: 2012
IMDB: 7.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 76%

The one convention that gangster and mob flicks always associate with themselves is a capitalist society. Most of the time, these aren’t on-the-nose references but those looking for the parallels between the sloppy murder of a target and a poor economic structure are bound to find them. It takes an expert director to use subtlety for a convention we all expect to find in a film genre, but perhaps it’s more difficult to show the theme of a gangster flick alongside the film itself, and still entertain. That’s what Andrew Dominik has attempted to do here with his sophomore effort, Killing Them Softly, a ruthless film about the poor economy and how it can impact even the lowest, and seemingly most disconnected from reality, societies. It is brash, and very heavy-handed in its delivery, but it also contains a finesse to it that shows how the possession of money is so transitory and what it does to those who rely on it too much.

Brad Pitt is the main attraction of this film, though he’s assisted throughout the film by a stellar cast of the most commonplace names in these types of films. He plays Jackie Cogan, a hitman called in to deal with Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), two low-life criminals who choose to rob Mark Trattman’s (Ray Liotta) card game. Believing it to be a fool-proof plan that will result in everyone suspecting Trattman to have robbed his own game (which he had done previously successfully), Jackie is brought in to make sure no one gets away with it and everyone knows not to do it again. The movie takes place primarily through dialogue sequences, most of which feel like they’re either going for a Snatch or Tarantino-esque feel, but it’s really only the conversations between Jackie and the mysterious Driver (Richard Jenkins) that entertain and feel significant, especially their final conversation, which embodies the entire film and throws away any expectation that subtlety may exist in this movie. The conversations between Frankie and Russell are entertaining on a very base level, but almost every conversation drags as it hits the same points over and over.