Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (October 30, 2022)
In 2011, Brad Pitt starred in two Academy Award-nominated movies: Tree of Life and Moneyball. He also got an Oscar nod as Best Actor for his work in the latter.
2012 went less well for the actor. Pitt appeared in one movie, and it flopped.
Killing Them Softly received mixed reviews and tanked at the box office, where it made a miserable $14 million. Yes, that’s a smidgen more than Tree of Life, but no one expected the Terrence Malick “art house flick” to rake in money.
Despite the negatives attached to the film, I like Pitt enough that I wanted to give Softly a look. Set in 2008, underground card games work as a crucial part of a local gangster economy.
A few years earlier, mobster Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta) robbed his own set-up, an action that shut down the games for quite a while. When they resumed, Markie eventually admitted he perpetrated the heist, but no one really seemed to care at that point.
Small-time hood Johnny Amato (Vincent Curatola) thinks the time is ripe to knock off another game, especially because he believes Markie will take the rap. He hires thugs Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) to do this, and they pull off the crime.
Once again, this harpoons the local gangster economy, though not with the ramifications Amato and company expected, as no one thinks Trattman did it. The local bosses bring in hitman Jackie Cogan (Pitt) to get to the bottom of events and settle affairs.
In Softly, we get a fairly simple crime story bogged down with delusions of grandeur. Rather than focus on the basic narrative, it comes with ample political/economic metaphors.
The choice to set the tale in 2008 doesn’t come as an accident. The film uses that year’s presidential campaign and the economic meltdown as backdrop/analogies.
Analogies that don’t work, in my opinion. While I sort of admire the ambition to make this more than just a standard mobster flick, the pretensions tend to backfire.
They distract from the inherent power of the story and weigh down the flick with its thin metaphors and commentary. We’d have been better off without them.
In addition, director Andrew Dominik tends toward distracting stylistic excesses. For instance, one scene with heroin addict Russell tries to give us events from his POV.
This means dreamy pacing/focus intended to let us see life through the junkie’s eyes. This doesn’t add to the story, so it just feels like a pointless cinematic choice.
These misfires are a shame because otherwise, Softly has potential – and even with the flaws, it remains fairly involving. It comes with a solid cast, and they do pretty good work.
In particular, Richard Jenkins makes the most of his limited screentime as the officious middleman who works with Jackie for the bosses. He seems out of place among these thugs and lowlifes and manages to turn in a compelling portrait.
The nature of the criminal economy also manages to make the tale interesting. While we’re used to mobster flicks with semi-omnipotent bosses, Softly lacks a leadership core.
In fact, we don’t get to know anything about the chiefs, and they seem as mired in indecision and confusion as everyone else. That’s an unusual and effective choice that adds some juice to a tale that could’ve become trite.
All of this leaves Softly as a generally intriguing but spotty crime flick. While I find more than a few strong elements, the negatives cause more of a drag on it than I’d like.
