Killing Them Softly

 

Though competently made, I feel like I've seen Killing Them Softly before.  Actually, I feel like I've seen it a hundred times before.  This is yet another crime noir thriller with occasional bits of dark humor, and an ironic soundtrack of soft, old and upbeat music accompanying graphic depictions of murder.  The one new element it does add doesn't work - It tries to compare the world of professional gangsters and con artists to the current economic situation in America.  Unfortunately, it does this in the most heavy-handed way possible, with sound bytes from Obama and George W. Bush blasting on the soundtrack, just in case we don't get the message.

The action kicks off with two small-time hoods (Scotty McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) pulling a job for their boss (Vincent Curatola).  As we listen to the two hoods talk to each other during their drive to the job, their dialogue sounds like every other recent gangster picture ever written, complete with so many forced uses of the "f-word", you'd think writer-director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) was being paid by the number of obscenities he slips into his dialogue.  Their job is to rob a card game run by the mob, and a lowlife card shark named Markie Trattman (Ray Liota).  The job goes off as planned, but it attracts the unwanted attention of mob enforcer, Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt).  Jackie is ordered to make a hit on the three who pulled off the job, hiring a killer named Mickey (James Gandolfini) to do the job.  When Mickey becomes overly distracted by booze and hookers, Jackie decides to do the hit himself the only way he knows how - killing them softly and as subtle as possible.

The movie has been made with great care, but so what?  This is another routine crime thriller that we've seen dozens of times before.  Even worse, this is a crime thriller that is in love with hearing itself talk.  These characters talk incessantly, and certain scenes of dialogue seem to go on for 10 minutes or more, so we're just watching the camera bounce back and forth between two people for far longer than we need to.  The characters talk endlessly here, and it grinds the movie to a halt on more than one occasion.  It would be one thing if the things these characters were talking about were interesting, but it usually boils down to the characters over-explaining the plot, or talking about things like prostitutes and money.  The movie never seems to flow properly, since the characters feel the need to talk on end about what they're going to do before they even do it.

Killing Them Softly has a lot of unnecessary style when the characters finally stop talking, and start shooting at one another.  We get a lot of slo-mo bullets, and graphic depictions of people being blown open.  Is this the movie's way of jolting us awake?  If so, it does the job.  Unfortunately, it doesn't take long until the characters are just talking endlessly again about what they're going to do next.  The pacing here is all off.  It's supposed to be kinetic and suspenseful, but we never feel any sort of rush.  The movie also makes limited use of its post-Katrina New Orleans setting.  It could have been filmed just about anywhere, and still gotten the same effect.  The film is constantly throwing symbolism at us regarding New Orleans and the 2008 Presidential election, and none of it really does anything, or adds anything to the experience.

The performances are fine all around, and nobody seems to be phoning it in.  It's just they couldn't sell this material to me.  The actors are up there on the screen, explaining every plot element in the tiniest detail, but they can't make any of it work.  When you have talent like Pitt, Liota, and the invaluable Richard Jenkins on the screen, and they can't sell this material, you know your movies is in trouble.  Truth be told, some of the bits of humor thrown throughout the film are funny and help liven things briefly, but the good feelings these scenes generate don't last long.  I felt like I was being kept at a distance from these characters the entire time.  Maybe that was the idea.  Even so, it doesn't work, because the dialogue just isn't sharp enough to make much of an impression.

 

Killing Them Softly plays like a missed opportunity.  You can see little bits of electricity throughout the film that hint at a much more satisfying movie, but it simply decides to coast along and just have its characters talk amongst themselves.  The movie's certainly not unwatchable, but given the talent both behind and on the screen, I expected a lot more.

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