KILLING THEM SOFTLY (2012)

Genre: Drama/Crime
Director: Andrew Dominik
Cast: Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, Garret Dillahunt, James Gandolfini, Bella Heathcote, Richard Jenkins, Sam Shepard, Max Casella, Vincent Curatola, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Linara Washington
RunTime: 1 hr 37 mins
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language and Violence)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films & InnoForm Media
Official Website: http://killingthemsoftlymovie.com/

Opening Day: 3 January 2013

Synopsis:  Adapted from George V. Higgins' novel and set in New Orleans, Killing Them Softly follows professional enforcer, Jackie Cogan (Pitt), who investigates a heist that occurs during a high stakes, mob-protected, poker game. The film also features Scoot McNairy (Monsters), Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom), Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), with James Gandolfini, Vincent Curatola, Max Casella and Sam Shepard among others.

Movie Review:

There’s a strange tendency in Killing Them Softly to take the most stock elements of genre storytelling and try to make them more intelligent than they deserve to be, usually through a preponderance of smart-alecky political commentaries and heaps and heaps of more long-winded dialogue. As if by taking a script and drenching it in heavy-handed political references and corny lines that sound like they came right out of a young couple on phone sex that Killing Them Softly will be redeemed. The process is not unlike injecting water into cheap meat to make it weightier, and has about the same effect: a shamelessly lean production masquerading as a feature-length movie. Such is the case with Killing Them Softly.

Based on George V. Higgins’s 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade – one which we can only assume is as much of an incredible drag as its movie translation – Killing Them Softly tells the very simple story of two small-time gangsters who decide to spring a surprise on a mob-controlled poker game and take all the money.  Apparently, robbery becomes the most viable solution to poverty when one is a hopeless heroin addict and the other, an incorrigible womanizer. Enter brutal hitman Cogan, played here by the hirsute Brad Pitt with as much of a cold, cavalier disposition towards human lives as one could ever hope for, who is sent to investigate the robbery and restore the economy of the mob. The rest, as they say, is history.

From the beginning of the movie, with then-candidate Barack Obama’s campaign speech during the 2008 US presidential election intercutting the presentation of the movie’s title, it’s obvious director Andrew Dominik is gunning for a purpose far deeper than what the plot could possibly offer. In the same way that bargain-basement shaky-cam movies have hatched more than one method to convey grainy pictures to viewers, Dominik delivers snippets of campaign speeches through the multiple television and radio broadcasts that run in the background of the movie’s proceedings. At best it appears to be a gimmick and at worst it seems like an inexorable distraction. Yet to understand why Dominik thinks this is even necessary at all is to understand American politics.

Where many even-keeled audiences will find joy in dissecting the movie’s numerous political references and come to justify Dominik’s well-documented, contentious creative decision as more than an easy contrivance, many more will be left perplexed. Planting the recession circa 2008 – a point that was highly publicised in the campaign speeches of Obama and McCain – as the root of all evils, Dominik tries to offer a reasonable explanation for the desperate robbery and everything else, including Cogan’s motivations as a hitman, coming fully demonstrated in a heated diatribe against Obama’s optimistic words in the last scenes. That said, a movie advertised as a simple, fun and tense mob action vehicle must – first and foremost – please on the merits of its proceedings.

Which Killing Them Softly does not. The movie relies so profoundly on the viewer’s inherent knowledge of American politics that those less familiar with the subject are likely to find it simplistic and immensely boring. Aside from a fortunate stylistic inconsistency that sees Cogan execute a victim in an overly indulgent slow-mo sequence, Dominik’s selfish quest to put his almost boastful grasp of complicated topics before the audience’s expectations and enjoyment means Killing Them Softly entertains none but the most scrutinising. The rest of the movie is exhausted with gangsters prattling on about sex with prostitutes like children talking in overly excited tones about Ben 10. It’s just distressing that Dominik has little else to give.

In totality, Killing Them Softly feels like a half hour of plot stretched over too large a frame and filled with excesses like political references and meandering dialogue about irrelevant subjects. It’s a movie that asks the audience to do the heavy lifting in terms of understanding American politics. That would be fine if it had earned that kind of narrative trust, but instead manages to be the sort of movie you will never want to watch on any day: too wafer-thin, too long and too demanding to get to anything remotely appealing. Unless you have a clear understanding of American politics, steer clear. Killing Them Softly is through and through a snorefest.

Movie Rating:

(Requiring a decent knowledge of American politics to really appreciate, Killing Them Softly is otherwise too simplistic, too long and too boring to be worth plodding through)

Review by Loh Yong Jian