killing them softly

movies:  Killing Them Softly is the new movie collaboration between director Andrew Dominik and Brad Pitt.  They had previously worked together on The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, a sweeping three hour western epic whose length was only matched by the beauty of its scenery.  This is a much different story.  It is the concise tale (under two hours) of a group of men from a nondescript rundown American town who have turned to crime at the height of the recession in 2008 as a way to make ends meet.  Some are more professional criminals and some are more just average down on their luck guys who got in over their heads.
In the movie Brad Pitt plays a hit man named Jackie who is brought into town to clean up a mess after a poker game run by the mob has been robbed.  His job is to kill the four people involved in the robbery of the game. Two of them are the robbers, Frankie (played by Scoot McNairy who is having a sneaking good year between this and his fantastic role in Argo) and Russel, Ben Mendelsohn's goofy Austrailian sidekick.  These are two down on their luck guys.  Frankie is an out of work ex-con in need of a dollar and willing to take on illegal work to make it.  Russel seems like he may just be too dumb to get a real job since his other criminal enterprise is smuggling pure bread dogs to Florida in a station wagon twenty at a time.  Their boss, Johnny, is another man on Pitt's list.  Johnny is one of the more odd characters I've ever watched.  He is played by Vincent Curatola, most famously known for his role as Johnny Sacrimone on the Sopranos.  Watching the movie I almost couldn't help but wonder if the two Johnnys were the same character given the similarities in Curatola's acting of the two combined with the fact that at one point in the movie to being thrown in prison seven years ago.  If you line that up with the timeline of the Sopranos given when it went off the air, that is frighteningly close in real time to when we saw Johnny Sac get picked up by the Feds.  But I digress.  Killing Them Softly's Johnny forces a change in Jackie's plans when Jackie realizes that they have met, forcing him to call in some help.  But we'll get back to the help later.  The final man on the hit list is the guy who runs the poker game, Markie Trattman.  After Trattman's involvement in the robbery of the game comes under suspicion by the mob, Jackie decides he has to go.  This is done furthering the theme of the movie when Jackie explains to his employer that Markie has to go to get people back to the game.  For if the game stops, the ability to make money will stop.  And in these tough times that is just an unacceptable state of living.
The greatest moments of the movies portrayal of the recession came not in its moments of criminal activity, but in the quiet moments spent between Jackie and the help he calls in to take care of Johnny. His help is Mickey, played by James Ganodlfini, an older hit man who seems like he is not getting the work he once might have thanks to younger more able men like Jackie.  When Mickey arrives, the two go out to lunch to talk about the job they are there to do.  While catching up Mickey explains that his life isn't exactly roses these days, facing a nasty divorce while not getting the steady work he once did, and now needs given the alimony he knows he is facing.  With multiple men in need of killing, Mickey is saddened to here that he is only brought in to kill one, thus limiting his income.  As if he is a manager looking sympathetically at an assembly line worker, Jackie says to Mickey, hey you can have a double(shift/hit) if you want.  If you need the money, that's fine.  Mickey pridefully declines.  Later Jackie shows up at Mickey's hotel room so they can go to work only to find him drunk and having not slept for days, not to mention with a hooker in his room.  As Mickey woefully talks of a brighter time in his life, Jackie realizes that his friend is just not up to doing the job required of him and does the only thing he can, step and do the whole job because in times like these he can't leave work undone and unpaid for, in times like these it would be un-American.
By the time the movie ended I felt thoroughly satisfied.  The come thriller moments of the movie were fantastic.  The heists were fun.  The violence was quite artfully shot at times.  There was some great dialogue that hearkened back to Tarentino's Like A Virgin monologue in Reservior Dogs.  The acting was fantastic.  Pitt was able to straddle the line between menacing hit man and counselor to an old friend fallen on hard times.  McNairy and Gandolfini turned in two of the better supporting performances of the year.  I even enjoyed the allegory.  The world of criminal enterprise and the greed that is inherent in it mirroring a time in our country where most people were willing to just say yes to jobs to keep paychecks coming to pay the bills rather than chasing things that made them happy because we were finding that the most American thing we could do in those times was go to work.
If there is one major criticism though it would have to be Dominik's lack of subtlety in portraying this image.  While the scene's between Pitt and Gandolfini were perfectly executed, the movie was also littered with moments where it felt like the recession was being shoved a little too much to the forefront.  As I stated earlier the movie takes place during the election of 2008, at the height of the recession, and the movie is littered with speeches and news clips of McCain, Obama, and Bush talking about the difficult times we were in and how they were going to get better.  The movie also ends with Pitt making a cynical speech about the state of America that can only be compared to some of his moments in Fight Club and Ed Norton's big "New York" speech in 25th Hour.  While Pitt delivers it stirringly, it is the final moment of the movie.  The point has already been made, and very clearly at that.  Being that I am admittedly a fan of the more subtle portrayals of ideas in film, I can't help but feel that a summation isn't always necessary.
In summation, the movie was absolutely satisfying and nothing more.  It was fun and entertaining and even had something interesting to say despite the fact that I had occasional problems with how it was said.  Pitt, McNairy, and Gandolfini were excellent.  See what I mean.