Film Review: Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly. Rated MA 15+ (strong violence, drug use, sexual references and coarse language). 97 minutes. Written and directed byAndrew Dominik. Based on the novel Cogan's Trade by George Higgins.

Verdict: Andrew Dominik takes on the gangster genre and wins with this audacious take on contemporary American crime and poverty.

Dominik (Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) reunited with the star of Jesse James – Brad Pitt – works wonders in the bleak, poverty-stricken film about consequences. In this case, the consequences of a robbery carried out by Scoot McNairy’s fragile Frankie (pictured) and Ben Mendelsohn’s deluded Russell – a couple of inexperienced young hopefuls who aspire to a better life.

Set against the backdrop of the collapse of the American economy and the 2008 American presidential election (when George Bush was decisively swept from power by Barack Obama), Dominik’s screenplay is a meticulously-observed character study about the very human beings behind the gangster masks. While it begins slowly, the stayers will be rewarded by not only Dominik’s ensemble of the best performances this year, but also the extent to which he has the audacity to not only take on one Hollywood’s most significant genres but to take it right back up to them on a relentlessly slow boil and – in a cinematic tour de force – painfully slow motion.

Cinematographer Grieg Fraser (Snow White and the Huntsman) brings an extraordinary sense of austere intimacy to not only the derelict locations of today’s suburban America but also each of the richly-drawn and flawlessly rendered characters. John Paul Horstmann and Brian A Kates’s (Shortbus) supremely accomplished editing ensures that the hypnotic quality of the screenplay and the performances stays with you for a long after the film is over.

McNairy and Mendelsohn are heart-breakingly good as the once optimistic young men dragged into crime, while James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano in The Sopranos) is, as you might expect, quite brilliant as washed-up hitman Mickey. Ray Liotta’s performance as the unfortunate, poker game king Markie is riveting – with the long, almost languid scene where he is held to account for a heist he had nothing to do with – unbearably tense.

But it is Brad Pitt as hitman Jackie Cogan (who is called in to fix up the mess that everyone seems to have created for themselves) who delivers yet another performance of immense, career-defining power. If Pitt’s delivery of the film’s unexpected final speech is simply brilliant, the scene he shares with the excellent McNairy in a pub where he encourages the distressed young Frankie to share what he knows about who is involved is one of the finest scenes of any film this year.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.