Film Review: Killing Them Softly

I have previously mentioned Andrew Dominik is cynical of the American public. What I have not previously explored was just how much more cynical he is of the American dream as a whole. In Killing Them Softly he takes the time to make sure you understand that he doesn’t buy into what the politicians and the hopeful are trying to sell. The opening scene places the camera staring at a deserted urban street in the middle of the day with a voiceover of one of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign speeches. Before you can get settled in, the screen cuts to black with a loud, piercing note and title cards show. These two different styles repeat themselves but as soon as you think you have figured out the rhythm to these cuts, Dominik changes it up completely. This technique is used to both show the setting of the film as well as keep the audience off balance. It’s jarring and effective.

The first character we meet is Frankie played by Scoot McNairy who feels like he is trying to mimic Casey Affleck throughout the film. Throughout all of his scenes I got the feeling that Dominik tried to maintain the leading duo from his previous film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but instead found someone who could act as similarly as possible. Frankie is a young punk who teams up with his lifelong friend Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) to hold up a backroom casino, a job given to them by their small-time neighborhood mob boss Johnny Amato (Vincent Curatola). The job goes according to plan and of course the people who lost out on their money want answers. For that they turn to Jackie (Brad Pitt), a  hitman who only kills people he doesn’t know. He likes to kill people “soflty and from a distance.” It seems every killer has their “code (to steal a word from Dexter) these days, and if that’s how Jackie wants to do it he will need help with one of the men he just so happens to know. For this he convinces the nameless character played by Richard Jenkins to hire Mickey (James Gandolfini). Gandolfini is the star of this show as a down on his luck hitman who has two goals every day: drink and sleep with as many prostitutes as he can.

The rest of the plot is pretty straightforward and predictable, all happening with random cuts of both Senator Obama’s hopeful speeches and then-President George W. Bush’s confidence in the country’s ability to rebound from the financial collapse that we all remember so well. What sets the film apart with such a standard plot is the stylization and beauty of the cinematography. The scene where Jackie makes his first hit in particular is just fun to watch for the effects used and placement of the camera. As his previous films have shown, this is what Dominik excels at. His films will always look fantastic. More than that, the final monologue that Jackie gives to Richard Jenkins just does a complete stab, twist, pull action to the American dream that will have you thinking while the credits role. The biggest issue with the film is the running time. At 97 minutes it is almost a full hour shorter than the aforementioned Jesse James was and it manages to miss the details and nuances that make that film a masterpiece and leaves Killing Them Softly a simply above average film.

B-