Director: Andrew Dominik
Cast: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini
Running time: 97 minutes
Certificate: 18
Plot: When two small-time criminals hold up an illegal gambling den, mob enforcer Jackie is brought in to restore order…
You’d be forgiven for thinking THE SOPRANOS was the last word on the gangster. After six seasons of masterful genre deconstruction, is there really anything left to say on the subject? KILLING THEM SOFTLY says yes – or, “fugget about it!” perhaps – without retreading the same old ground.
Set against the backdrop of the 2008 US presidential election, KILLING THEM SOFTLY is as much about politics as it is organized crime. Its true satirical power lies at the crossroads between the two – “America is a business,” says Brad Pitt’s silky smooth mobster Jackie. “Now fucking pay me.”
Most interesting is KILLING THEM SOFTLY’s look at the politics of organized crime. Since the days of Jimmy Cagney, the mob’s code of conduct has been an established part of the gangster genre. Writer-director Dominik pulls apart the logic of that code – who gets whacked for what, and how it plays “on the street” – giving a fresh spin on something that’s usually just taken for granted, on both sides of the camera.
This is expertly developed between Pitt’s Jackie and his corporate sponsor, played by the ever-brilliant Richard Jenkins. Jackie’s job is to explain the unwritten rules of the mafia, while it’s the job of Jenkins’ character to (quite reasonably) question the rationale. Of course, when all’s said and done and the gun smoke has cleared, they’re both businessmen whose only real concern is money. One kind of businessman likes the world to know when he’s put a bullet in someone’s head; the other’s too PR savvy to be seen getting his hands dirty.
That’s not to say Jackie is your ordinary mob hitman. He likes to do his killing from a distance so he won’t have to witness his victims’ crying or calling for their mothers (“It’s embarrassing,” he says). Where possible, he’ll also try to save them the grief and agony of a beating – especially when a gun will put them out of their misery.
It’s darkly comic stuff, offset it with the gangster’s most traditional strengths – drama, tension, and uncomfortably graphic violence. The film’s smartest trick, however, is the casting of genre icons, such as James Gandolfini, Vincent Curatola, and Ray Liotta. This time around, they’re defined in contrast to the characters we know from THE SOPRANOS and GOODFELLAS. Gandolfini in particular is wonderful. As mafia gun-for-hire Mickey, he’s like a broken down version of Tony Soprano, whose years in the business – the booze, the women, the politics and prison time – have left him washed up and pathetic. The archetypal mobster as you’ve never seen him before.
Strangely, he proves there’s life in the old gangster yet.
KILLING THEM SOFTLY arrives in UK cinemas 21st September
