"Killing Them Softly" Film Review

The American gangster-movie is such familiar territory by now, it's hard to suppress a sneaking, guilty suspicion that the genre might be played out. "Killing Them Softly" smartly acknowledges this familiarity, portraying the hoary tropes of cinematic criminality (the heist, the hit-man, the gangland execution) with an air of world-weary misery and pessimism. The sight of the Goodfella himself, Ray Liotta, as a podgy, whimpering scapegoat for other men's crimes, is a statement of intent, as is the spectacle of ex-Tony Soprano James Gandolfini as a dissolute has-been hit-man. The only character who isn't purely venal or pathetic is Brad Pitt's polished, poster-hogging assassin Cogan, who is called in to clean up after some weasly chancers rip off a Mob-run high-stakes poker game. Competent and confident, yet cynical down to the bone and utterly ruthless, Cogan is ultimately a cypher, a moral vacuum that seems to suck in other characters (less coldly committed to the grim logic of their violent world) like a black hole of icy determination. Behind his deft gestures and careful grooming, he is as squalid as the lesser crooks who blunder into his sights; behind Brad Pitt's gracefully-aging handsomeness, something blandly ugly studies a grey, diseased world with calm calculation.

The film makes its blackly cynical point with an admirable degree of aplomb, yet it also trips itself up with some awkward gestures that betray a sensibility styling itself as something more clever and profound than it really is. The plot is deliberately mundane, a grubby little tragedy of men outside the law killing each other in predictable ways. The actual violence is sparse yet intense; there is no creativity to the cruelty, just fists, feet, and bullets, but the gory ferocity of the damage is effectively chilling, especially a squishy punishment beating inflicted on a relatively blameless victim that stands as a masterclass in pointless savagery.

Yet the lack of twists and turns also hurt the film, as it betrays how flimsy its message really is. The fact the makers resort to the now-tedious gambit of having acts of bloodshed sound-tracked by inappropriately pleasant music reveals a lack of ideas beyond flaunted nihilism, as well as a rather obvious and abrupt stab at social commentary acting as the film's punchline, a half-second before the credits hit.

Killing Them Softly is a watchable effort, with a convincing atmosphere of bleakness. However a dash of pretension reduces it from a quiet classic to a bleak little curio.