It opens with a series of unnerving
stutters, crosscutting between the credits—silent, stark, white on black—and
images of greasy hoodlum Frank (Scoot McNairy) exiting a darkened building for
the sodden daylight of some profoundly rundown US city while one Senator Obama
fills the soundtrack with something about “the American promise of life.” As Killing Them Softly ambles toward its flamboyantly
cynical conclusion, the city becomes only more a shambles of windblown refuse
and houses collapsing in slow motion, Frank and his colleagues become only more
hunched with fear, and the broadcasts of speeches made by Obama and Bush that
follow the characters everywhere they go become only more redolent of a
distinctly American combination of stoic apologia and unconvincing optimism.
The story is set in 2008, only four years ago, though this is very much a
period piece, with the financial crisis and swap of presidents functioning as
an increasingly overstated counterpoint to the film’s seedy milieu of robbery,
gambling, dope and murder. The plot is unremarkably generic, featuring a heist
followed by a series of killings. But Killing
Them Softly isn’t about its plot.
New
Zealand director Andrew Dominik’s previous film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was so
tailored for my personal tastes that I resented it. A downbeat western
following a fascinatingly strange historical trajectory and high on atmospheres
derivative of Terrence Malick, Jesse
James struck me as pandering. It kept getting in its own way with precious
stylistics. The funny thing about Killing
Me Softly is that something like the reverse of Jesse James’ problem has happened. The film’s One Big Idea—“America’s
not a country, it's a business,” goes the penultimate line of dialogue—is
ultimately far too simplistic to sustain such an incessant refrain as it gets treated
to here in scene after scene. Yet Dominik’s determination to impart a directorial
signature actually complicates his message in some truly engaging ways. That
arresting opening described above is complimented by a bravura, tension-filled
sequence in which Frank and an Australian junky, glistening with about six
weeks worth of sweat, rob a poker game populated by mafia; by a drug-taking
scene built from woozy push-ins and gauzy flickers of amber light; by an
assassination scene slowed down to such a glacial frame rate that the victim’s
head turns a windshield into a spider web one crack at a time.
And the
stylistic gambles aren’t just to do with sound effects and vision. Dominik’s
screenplay, an updated adaption of George V. Higgin’s Coogan’s Trade, makes room for an absorbing series of extended
monologues—most memorable are those made by James Gandolfini’s aging, groggy, sex-and-booze
addicted hitman—riddled with anxiety, rampant misogyny, self-pity and
squeamishness. Quentin Tarantino made talky crime films into a subgenre, but
Dominik’s is a different variety of verbose thug. All the characters in Killing Me Softly are men, and all are
repugnant in the extreme—who cares about these scumbags? But get them talking
for a while, and you find that you want to hear more.
So take this as
a wary recommendation. Killing Me Softly is
at once painfully obvious yet, somehow, captivating. The cast is uniformly
marvelous, with a great supporting turn from Richard Jenkins doing mob middle
management, and yes, Brad Pitt, a character actor who just happens to be very
handsome, as the most sensible assassin of the bunch. He’s something of a
softie when it comes to killing, but he understands the bottom line. The film’s
final words? “So fucking pay me!”
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