Killing Them Softly – review

Brandolfini: Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini in Killing Them Softly. Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon

Arriving at cinemas on the back of a slick trailer, critical buzz and the prospect of Brad Pitt returning to iconic bad-boy mode, Killing Them Softly screams out ‘must-see’.

Director Andrew Dominik, who previously directed Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (the latter also starring Pitt), has again picked a likeable criminal as his premier focus.

Throw Ray Liotta and James Gandolfini, who possess legendary on-screen gangster status, into the mix and you can understand the excitement surrounding the film.

The premise centres on the fall out of a mob-run poker game that has been turned over by a couple of plucky thieves. These thieves, Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), are a little of out of their depth, but they are hard-up chancers who’ve been told it is an easy steal by Johnny “Squirrel” Amato (Vincent Curatola), who hires Frankie for small-time jobs.

“Mob poker game” and “easy steal” don’t seem like concepts that go together, but the key is that these games, run by Markie Trattman (Liotta), have been robbed before and the blame is set to drop right on Trattman’s doorstep.

Frankie pulls in his pal Russell against Squirrel’s wishes for the two-man job and although the snatch seemingly goes to plan, despite their amateurish approach – they use a suspect-looking sawn-off shotgun, stockings over their faces and marigolds for gloves – Russell is an over-causal Aussie slacker who is always high on drugs and worryingly talkative. Soon enough, he talks too much.

The mobsters want revenge and an example made and Trattman is in trouble whether they believe he is behind the steal or not, as they want their pound of flesh.

They put forward their man for the occasion, Driver (Richard Jenkins), to act as negotiator for acquiring the services of hitman Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) and overseeing the completion of executions of all involved in the hit on the poker game.

Jackie is not your average assassin: he is a philosophising cynic who is as intriguing as he is brutal. He takes his time about his work and he does things his own way, in his own style. He says, “I kill them softly, from a distance.

Not close enough for feelings,” and for this reason he decides to draft in an old contact called “New York” Mickey (James Gandolfini) to dispatch Squirrel, whom he knows personally, as he doesn’t want to get close enough for these “feelings”.

It turns out that Mickey is a little washed up and his love of alcohol and call-girls is clearly out of control. So, Jackie’s job becomes a lot less straightforward than it may have seemed.

Killing Them Softly, adapted from a George V. Higgins novel of the same name, has heavy overtones of the Coen brothers in its quirkiness and even the plotline, and the dialogue in Dominik’s screenplay seems to have aspirations of Tarantino heights, with snappy comic lines balanced out by atmospheric scenes with long, nostalgic anecdotes.

The interplay and jesting between the characters is amusing. Pitt and Gandolfini are electric, as is the excellent Mendelsohn. The music is great too and the killing scenes are stunningly composed to produce wonderfully macabre beauty.

However, by the end of the film there is a suspicion that you have witnessed a case of style-over-content and the backdrop of the Obama/McCain presidential race and financial recession – Jackie is at odds with much of Obama’s positive spin – seems a forced addition to the plot, despite the unsubtle suggestion of its relevance.

When the credits roll after just 97 minutes, things are slightly anticlimactic, as though something more was required, but Brad Pitt is worth the entrance fee alone as he portrays a kind of hitman incarnation of Tyler Durden. Enough said.

Killing Them Softly (18)
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Starring: Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Vincent Curatola, Richard Jenkins
Running time: 97 minutes

Killing Them Softly is showing at the Hackney Picturehouse until mid-October.