During the height of the recession, in an attempt to stay afloat, members of the banking oligarchy like Price Waterhouse booked their staff into economy. Gone were the days traveling in luxury leather cradled seats and flat beds in First or Business class, this privilege was reserved for the highest serving board members. Apparently, the American mob learned a valuable lesson and quickly followed.
Killing them Softly
Whilst we steer our scrutinizing away from institutional travel schedules, it is the smaller organized criminal corporations that is the study of Andrew Domonik’s Killing them Softly, a crime gangster flick in the Scorsese tradition of Goodfellas and Meanstreets. The movie is a valuable addition to the pulp hitman/crime genre which sees some superb performances from some big names.
Adapted from a 1970’s novel and from the director who gave us the lyrical Mailck-esque Assassination of Jesse James by Robert Ford the Coward.
Animal Kingdom’s Mendelsohn convincingly nods off at all the right points, or wrong, considering he’s trying to distance himself from the crime. Heroin dictates his every move as he enterprises by selling valuable stolen puppies in Florida.
The plot centres around a heist of a card game. When two small-time stick up boys jack a middle level mob game (not nearly done with the same panache as when Omar Little jacks Marlo’s poker game in the Wire), Ray Liotta, who previously dared the same scam, is blamed by an out of town assassin, Cogan, played by Brad Pitt. Determined to punish every link, including Squirrel, the architect of this stupid crime, Pitt sub contracts the hit to James Tony Soprano Gandolfini. His excuse being, he finds it difficult to kill up close – killing, perhaps being the ultimate fear of our protagonists own death, so he prefers to “kill them softly.”
What distinguishes this crime caper from the run of the mill stick em ups gone wrong is the explorations of each character’s Achilles Heel. From a Catholicized fear of murder, a hotel room confession of marital breakdown to the junky’s opiate dream of climbing the rung from user to dealer, the characters in Killing Them Softly offer an analysis of motivations, all punctuated with black humor, convincing dialogue and scenes which rise with incredible conflict and intensity, filmed with superb cinematography.
Fans of the genre will be able to textually reference Gary Oldman in State of Grace, Joe Pesci in Goodfellas and Paolo Sorrentino’s assassin in the superb Consequences of Love. in this respect, the movie joins the pantheon of classic crime flicks.
However, the narrative is not without fault; the presidential running commentary on America’s financial crisis is constantly reiterated throughout the movie in an attempt to signify the film’s thematic elements. This is quite annoying. The out of town “strangers with a reputation” arrivals are filmed in a now cliche, Tom Cruise Collateral style sequences. These beg a little more invention.
Gandolfini’s hotel-motel disintegration subplot leaves us feeling quite unsatisfied and the only feminine appearance is a hooker who tells Gandolfini to go and screw himself in what is a claustrophobic labyrinth of macho and feral locations. It is their honest vulnerability which lifts the story above a b movie plot. However, these are petty niggles in the face of what is a study of breaking under pressure, disintegration of loyalties and payback violence.
Thankfully, there are no visceral introspective catharses here either. Whereas Ghostdog, Leon and Taxi Driver depict characters on the edge of their sanity, grasping to diary-esque bursts of inventory taking, here, the motives are purely financial. In short, the country’s institutions are drawn in a parallel to the mob. What works for the oligarchs can work for the mafia.
With Pitt dismissing Obama’s dream of community and unity with a “show me the money” ruthlessness, the film succeeds in exposing a realistic criminal world beneath a sometimes romanticized filmic veneer, and these criminals are brutal, seedy and unforgiving.
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