Killing Them Softly (2012)
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Jackie Cogan is an enforcer hired to restore order after three dumb guys rob a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse.
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4 films that influenced Killing Them Softly
What critics say influenced Killing Them Softly
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Visuals
The director's previous film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was among the most underrated of the last decade : as rich and evocative an elegy of America's outlaw era—and the movies it inspired—as any since Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West .
This one, written and directed by Andrew Dominik , for example, recalls Brad Pitt’s strong work in the director’s earlier “ The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ” (2007).
Andrew Dominik’s new movie, Killing Them Softly, adapted by Dominik from Higgins’ third novel, Cogan’s Trade , tries to mine a similar vein of workaday fatalism, but the film is ultimately done in by Dominik’s bursts of directorial grandiosity (already in evidence in his overly fussy last film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ).
Dominik, who last directed Pitt in the masterful postmodern Western “ The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ,” enlivens the otherwise monotonously unsavory cast of characters by enlisting a first-rate ensemble to play them, including Ray Liotta in a role that both reprises and subverts his Henry Hill persona from “ Goodfellas ” and James Gandolfini as a hired assassin being sucked down a vortex of food, alcohol and hookers.
Dominik's last film, the woefully under-seen The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , also explored the distinctly American mirroring between outlaw life and "normal" business; where that film was so painterly as to almost turn its subject into an abstraction, Killing Them Softly leaves no question as to its "real" reason for being.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford had a similar meditative vibe about it.
The director's previous film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was among the most underrated of the last decade : as rich and evocative an elegy of America's outlaw era—and the movies it inspired—as any since Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West .
The seemingly obvious touchstones here are the films of Ben Affleck, particularly “The Town.”
Also in this spectacular cast are veteran Sam Shepard as a fearsome enforcer, Boston’s own Slaine of “The Town” as a dumb thug named Kenny, and Linara Washington as a smart-mouthed hooker.
Still, declaring that “Killing Them Softly” is better than “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is like claiming that Adam Sandler’s odious film “That’s My Boy” is better than his even more odious film “Jack and Jill” from last year.