Let's Relitigate the Economy

Hollywood's history is dotted with more period pieces than could even be counted. While it's common to see any number of films set during a bygone era over the course of a year, it's rare that I go back and watch a film that was, at the time, modern but feels like a period piece now. Most films try to find an ageless quality, setting themselves in such a way that they ages as gracefully as possible, keeping a certain watchable quality years, even decades later. Films will age over time as fashion changes, attitudes adjust, eras evolve, but it's rare to find a film that feels so of a piece that it instantly dates itself.

Killing Them Softly is one such film, a movie set during such a specific era -- purposefully set, in fact -- that it's hard to go back and watch the film without feeling like you've just opened a time capsule. It's not just the meat of the film, which is a Mob film that feels like a Tarantino knock-off, with Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini as its heavies. The movie also directly (and indirectly) is all about the 2008 financial crisis and its fall out. This movie wanted to date itself, needs to date itself, all the make a point that, well, doesn't feel anywhere near as relevant now as it did.

Don't get me wrong, the thrust of the movie does hold up: the economy sucks and everyone is out to make a buck any way they can, legitimately or not. Sometimes the assholes get away with it, but when the hand goes into the cookie jar one to many times, someone will end up paying... it just isn't always the bad guys, or the people at the top, or the ones that are actually responsible. And then, in the end everyone gets screwed. That seems all to real now. No, the problem is that the film can't make that allusion without also loudly "making a point", and but setting it so specifically within it's own era -- the end of the W. Bush term and the rise of then-Senator Obama -- the film loses its own thread the second we move even ten years away from the era.

All of that is over top of what is a basic crime film, though. In the film two low-level hoods -- Scoot McNairy's Frankie and Ben Mendelsohn's Russel -- are brought in on a job by Vincent "The Squirrel" Amato (Vincent Curatola). A while earlier Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), who ran the Mob's illegal poker games, had the thought that he could just hit the games, using two masked goons to steal the cash and then split the profits with them. Thing is, months later, once the heat was off, he then confessed to it and everyone laughed it off because "everyone like Markie". But now, Squirrel realizes that they could hit the games again and everyone would think it was Markie putting his hand in the till again. Markie would be the perfect scapegoat. So the boys hit the game, all three split the profits, and they all have a good laugh at the expense of the Mob.

Unfortunately for our three wise guys, the Mob doesn't believe Markie did it. They call in their hitter, Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), and he arranges to off Markie -- you can't let street kids know that the games could be hit so an example had to be made -- but then the search was on to find the guys that actually did the deed. That's where the three low-level guys hit a snag because Russel, who is a drugged out tweaker, blabs about his score to a low-level Mob goon. Now the cat's out of the bag and Jackie is on to all of them. It's only a matter of time before the guys at the top get what's theirs, no matter who it hurts in the process.

When I saw this film years ago I remembered liking it. It was dark and gritty, like so many crime films of the era (unlike so many action-crime films that now are trying to copy the glossy, neon-drenched, fictional world of John WickStarted as a tale of redemption and then revenge (in that order), the John Wick series has grown to be a adynamic, reliable action series that doesn't skimp on the hard hits and gun-toting thrills, elevating Keanu Reeves as one of the greatest action stars ever.) and it had a solid performance from Brad Pitt. Going back and watching it, though, a lot of the luster I saw in the film has certainly worn off. Frankly, this film is a bit of a snooze now and it may just have been that what made the movie interesting back in the day -- contrasting organized crime with the crimes committed during the financial crisis -- doesn't really work anymore.

The film isn't subtle about the contrasting, mind you. It drenches the soundtrack with speeches from Bush II and Obama, making it very clear from moment one where the film is really aiming its target. This is all about financial crimes, those perpetrated on Wall Street, with the opinion of the movie (bore out by time, in fairness) that only the low-level guys would get screwed while the big organization would just keep on keeping on. That's all true, and point well made I guess, but there are ways to make an interesting movie out of all of that and Killing Them Softly fails on that score.

The times where Brad Pitt is on his own, playing Mob enforcer as he takes out dudes and plans hits, those moments are great. Pitt is generally looked at as a charismatic leading man, a bit of a goof at times which he plays up in his comedic roles, but it's doubtful many would view the actor as a heavy. This film does a credible job of showing new layers to the actor, letting him play a role outside his wheelhouse which he did with aplomb. I can see Pitt as a villain going forward (and not just because he was on the sidelines of the Harvey Weinstein scandal) as he does a great job with the role here.

The problem is that the film spends a lot of time on plot lines that don't matter, following characters long past the point where they're interesting, only serving to drag out this hour-and-a-half film. I suppose they had to do that because without all these scenes of padding the film would be twenty minutes of Pitt's Jackie learning about the hit on the illegal casino, learning who did it, and wiping them up in a few seconds. That's not much of a movie. So, instead, we get long, long sequences of criminals just talking, pattering about their lives, about their dicks, about some whore (their word) they had sex with back years ago in Florida. None of it matters, especially when it comes from Gandolfini's hired in hitter Mickey (as he doesn't even do his job and then is quietly removed from the film), but we have to sit through it all the same.

Writer/director Andrew Dominik clearly thought of himself as something of an auteur. He's found major acclaim with his film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a film I felt was an utter snore when I tried (and failed) to sit through it. That same sluggish pace as the director sits around watching his characters is active here in Killing Them Softly. Instead of setting his template against a western we get it with a Tarantino-style crime drama, but the effect is the same. This film is a chore to sit through, outside of the few glorious moments we get of real action.

There are some great moments to be had in this film, mind you. The casino job is a well set piece of film making, tense and rough. Then the first hit of the film, the job against Markie, is beautifully films. The director does have an eye, it's just that he doesn't really have an ear, letting his characters ramble on and on making speeches that he clearly was in love with but add nothing to the actual film. In the end I just wished the characters would shut up so we could get back to the action, which is generally the opposite reaction you're supposed to have to this kind of crime film. Tarantino can do it right, Dominik cannot.

I don't know that I hated Killing Them Softly but I am sure I won't ever want to watch it again. Whatever magic was in this film the first time I saw it has absolutely bled away. it's a pompous and tedious film that things it's much more interesting than it actually is. The director may have had a vision for his crime movie, a way to draw parallels to real world events and make a "statement". He makes his statement, with a sledgehammer, and the rest of the time we're all just dazed, waiting around for something, anything interesting to happen. Sadly it almost never does.