Killing Them Softly Review
Boring me majorly.
This is a film I saw a week ago but have not had the time to write up. Saying the Holidays are busy for me is like saying Red Tails is a bad movie. The actual words fail to encompass exactly how busy I am (or how bad Red Tails was). Sufficed to say things have been nuts but now I should have time to get caught up on reviews.
I am a Brad Pitt fan, and have been ever since I saw Fight Club mainly because there was nothing else on that day and walked out of the theater with the thundering realization that I had just accidentally seen my all time favorite film (I Beat Tyler Durden courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category). Inglorious Basterds was amazing, and I even got to like Meet Joe Black, although not for the story. In spite of the fact that Brad was originally sold to us as a pretty boy I have gotten to like him, and will take a serious look at any movie he opts to do.
All that being said, while he did an admirable job with the mediocre part he was handed there was nothing he could do to save this film from being a total snooze-fest. Watching this film is like staring out the window in detention in school where even the actions of two pigeons on a ledge seem fascinating because you are so painfully bored. It runs 97 minutes but felt like 197.
Like most mediocre to bad films the real sin the director committed was a failure to commit strongly enough in any single direction. At the same time this film tries to be an action film, character study, and drama while completely lacking in action, character development, or drama. Something like 75 of the 97 minutes is of two men sitting in a parked car talking about what they should do and why (different cars and different men, but almost the same scene every time). The main thing this repetitive shooting does is highlight how rote and mundane a lot of the camera work is. There is only so much shot-counter shot you can do in a film until it starts to feel like the editor is running off a metronome.
The other thing this film really lacks is a point. The whole thing seemed pitched as a character realization, either for the Brad Pitt character or the other main guy (Scoot McNairy-Argo, Monster, In Search of a Midnight Kiss). However, at the end nothing is realized and everyone is either worse off or exactly the same. There is some kind of sub plot involving James Gandolfini (the Sophranos, the Last Castle, In the Loop (<–great movie, BTW)) and his alcohol problem that just vanishing into the mist like a badly created sub plot. There might be some kind of important message about how fragile the organized crime illegal gambling economy is and how all it takes is one idiot to ruin it, but I failed to see the importance of that.
The story. Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn-Killer Elite, the Dark Knight Rises, Tresspass) are small time criminals and drug addicts who get hired (after the longest interview process in employment history) by a small kingpin (Vincent Curatola-the Sophranos, Monk, the Good Wife) to rob a local illegal poker game run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta-Goodfellas, Hannibal, Smoking Aces). (By the way, the casting director really phoned it in on this one. He or she was told this was a mafia film and called the first five guys cast typed into it (I guess Joe Pesci had other things to do)). Robbing a mafia game normally would get them all killed badly, but since Trattman was known for robbing his own game they all figured he would get the blame for it.
They rob the game, and that is pretty much the last interesting thing that happens in the entire film. The rest of it is Jackie (Brad Pitt), the mafia enforcer, being called in to find the guys and kill them. This might sounds good, but most of his search seems to involve sitting around talking about what it’s like to be a hit man or something. He hires his old frind Mickey (Gandolfini) to kill the guy who cooked the deal up but Mickey is more interested in drinking, hiring hookers, and bellyaching about his life to anyone in proximity. For some reason we are given extensive lectures on the economics of organized crime and criminal committee decision making, kind of in the same way that a lump of grass takes an extensive tour of a cows massive digestive system. There are a number of action-ish scenes that in a normal film would have been pretty cool but in this one it has all the excitement of a corpse twitching after death. I am going to use the old “I don’t want to drop any spoilers” excuse to end this story description, but the truth is just recalling it is triggering my narcolepsy.
The stars. Brad Pitt was decent even given the garbage role he was handed. One star. While the film was painfully boring the director made the merciful and wise decision to make it relatively short. One star. I don’t know where Mickey is finding his hookers, but the one that is shown is heartbreakingly hot (no nudity, however). One star (I’m kind of reaching here). Three stars total.
Boring. Boring boring boring boring boring boring dull. Two black holes. The ending felt worthless and rushed, like they suddenly all realized how dull the movie was and just wanted to end it so they could move on with their lives. One black hole. Not a single sympathetic character in the bunch, and no real protagonist. Even the main guy sucks for being so stupid. You kind of end up hating them all equally. One black hole. Mundane camera work and pulseless action. One black hole. A movie with all the pretension of having a point without actually having a point. One black hole. This is one of the very rare occasions that I can say I walked out of the theater with the definitive feeling that I had wasted my time and money. One black hole. Total: six black holes.
A total of three black holes. Worth seeing at all? Meh. If your choices are watching this or watching two pigeons on a ledge outside your window than sure. Not worth time in the theater in my opinion. See it at home. Date movie? Probably not. You will burn all your credit choosing a dude movie and then look lame when she passes out from boredom. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere. If you want to pick a specific scene I’d say the one where Russell and Frankie are smoking crack together. Even more nothing happens, and the only relevant plot point is restated by Brad Pitt five minutes later.
Thanks for reading, and sorry I had to start off with something dull like this. Some interesting stuff coming out this week. I will try to see something good soon. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review feel free to post them here. If you have any off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
