The Global Financial Crisis is the backdrop; every radio and tv blaring in the background clumsily drums that fact home, but Killing Them Softly seems to be set in a city that was messed up well before the banks went belly up.
In this unnamed run down town small time criminals and opportunists look for every chance to snatch a quick ill gotten dollar.
Anyone could do this job but no one does, because it would be stupid. At the instigation and encouragement of one man, a duo comprising the eager but ultimately stupid Frankie and the aggressively stupid Russell take on the lucrative and potentially unwise job, holding up Markie’s (Ray Liotta) underground card game.
It’s happened before, but after the dust cleared it was Markie’s myself who admitted culpability.
With the job being carried out flawlessly the mob call in the ‘investigators’. Jackie (Brad Pitt) is all quiet menace and pensive thought, Mickey (James Gandolfini) is his polar opposite, a boorish drunken slob. They – well Jackie does – pursue both the possibility of Markie’s trying his luck again, and the gossip that says two boneheads are bragging about getting away with it, with equal tenacity.
While Mickey boozes and whores it up, Jackie moves inexorably towards the truth. Unlike most cinematic hitmen Jackie prefers low key, long range hits with minimal conflict or danger for him. Similarly the film eschews many of the big loud shoot em up scenes that proliferate this genre, nor does the film follow the typical formula. Is this good? Is this bad? Probably neither. Killing Them Softly is a stylish noir oddity with an offbeat way of depicting the world of semi-organise crime, with only a clumsy comparison with the events of the Global Financial Crisis diluting the efficiency.
It’s by no means a breakthrough or unfairly overlooked film, but nor is it a wasteful vanity project.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. More than a curio, less than a triumph.
