With nary a mention of Roberta Flack or the miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the ironically titled “Killing Them Softly” boasts enough violent outbursts to make the beatdown in Martin Scorcese’s “Casino” look like a grade school fight at the bike racks. And the comparison to Scorcese, with his ostentious Steadicam shots and punched-up mobster dialogue, is particularly well-deserved for “Killing Them Softly” director Andrew Dominik.
The aforementioned punched-up mobster Frankie (Scoot McNairy) gets enlisted by Johnny “The Squirrel” (“The Sopranos’” Vincent Curatola) to rob a mob-operated poker game. The proprietor of the poker game, Markie (“Goodfellas’” Ray Liotta), openly admits to robbing his own cardroom once before, but his affable personality keeps his kneecaps firmly intact. The plan: Frankie knocks off the poker game while the mob, with its “Fool me once, shame on you” logic, comes after Markie.
Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan. In order to calm the black market’s fears of future robberies and reassert stability, the mob, as represented by Driver (Richard Jenkins), sends its enforcer Jackie (Brad Pitt) to sort out the heist as quickly as possible. As Jackie launches a violent investigation, he flies in Mickey (fellow “Sopranos” alum James Gandolfini) to work as a contract hitman. Gandolfini, in full-blown Tony Soprano depression mode, steals every scene as Mickey drinks himself half to death because of his recent marital troubles. The mob loses money as long as the cardrooms remain closed and Mickey’s volatile behavior doesn’t help to restore faith in the market.
Andrew Dominik, whose previous efforts include the languorously paced “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” uses “Mythbusters”-caliber high-speed cameras to slow down his fight scenes for maximum brutality. This bullet-time slo-mo gives “Killing Them Softly” its identity independent of other gangster genre fare. Meanwhile, the ironic use of music cues (“Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries” is a particularly jarring example), repeating the same shot from different angles for emphasis and fading in and out as a character loses consciousness calls attention to Dominik’s self-conscious stylizing. Enjoyment of the film relies on the viewer’s capacity to accept Dominik’s over-the-top directing.
“Killing Them Softly,” an adaptation of the novel “Cogan’s Trade,” updates the setting from the 1970s to the financial collapse of 2008 and clumsily uses the morally abhorrent mob tactics as commentary about Wall Street corruption. Dominik juxtaposes then-Senator Barack Obama’s iconic “Hope” campaign billboards against urban decay as sound bites of President George W. Bush’s push to bail out Wall Street forms the soundtrack. In case the audience didn’t get the lesson in business ethics, Driver refers to mob leadership as a board of directors and organized crime like a corporation. When Jackie remarks, “America’s not a country, it’s a business” during Obama’s election night victory speech, the message becomes as conspicuous as the film’s directing style.
However, for all its anti-Wall Street proselytizing, the film lacks substance, making “Killing Them Softly” a hollow story shaped by a heavy hand into one of the most stylish films of the year.
