Killing Them Softly
Killing Them Softly
R | 30 November 2012 (USA)
Killing Them Softly Trailers

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.

Reviews
Scanialara

You won't be disappointed!

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Micitype

Pretty Good

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UnowPriceless

hyped garbage

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Freaktana

A Major Disappointment

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VenturousArtist

Killing Them Softly alludes various political messages regarding greed, violence, theft, dangerous entrepreneurship and irony. Unfortunately, the film portrays these elements very loosely without actually maintaining its concentration and identity. It was advertised as a dark thriller with an inflated mob-mentality story, but was revealed to be a mediocre deflated mob-mentality story with some inappropriate comedic elements.Despite the wonderful cinematography, soundtrack and acting from the cast, the film alone divided from these additions is an unexciting and shallow film adaptation of the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade by George V. Higgins. Though changing the source material is a risky decision among any adaptation, it here however would've benefited for newcomers, fans, and would've possibly given the film more opportunities to indulge deeper in its political agenda.Instead, it sends disjointed and elongated messages that could've been memorable if were handled cleverly. The film shamelessly descends into an unfinished, unexciting, misguided and tedious experience for the audience. If the film allowed more character development and distance for less predictably dull outcomes, it would've been a superior product opposed to the novel.It's not terrible - but rather a slow and disappointing experience.

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NateWatchesCoolMovies

What can I really say about Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly. Well, my bosses named our site after it, and judging by our ongoing excellent taste in film (hehe), the namesake of our moniker should be a masterpiece. It is a masterpiece, a slow burning, truly clever crime yarn that slightly deconstructs the genre, sets it's story at a pivitol time in American history, and has some of the most hard hitting, intimate scenes of violence I've seen on film. Dominik takes his sweet damn time getting to know these characters before any bloodshed occurs, and when it does, it's a visceral affront to the senses, pulveruzing us with a very un-cinematic, realistic and entirely ugly vision of violence. Ray Liotta plays Markie, an illegal gambling official who once robbed one of his own games, subsequently boasting about it like a chump. When another of his outfits is knocked off by two scrappy losers (Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot Mcnairy) logic dictates that it must be him playing games again, and his superiors send a merry troupe of thugs to find him. The matter is overseen by Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) a slick, sophisticated killer who prefers to 'kill them softly', in other words, from a distance and with little pleading or fuss. He is employed by "" (an awesome Richard Jenkins), a businessman sort who isn't above haggling for the price of a killer's contract down to the very last dime. You see, the film is set during the 2008 financial crisis, and Dominik takes every opportunity he can to fill his frames with debris, dereliction and strife. Even in a world of criminals the blow to the economy is felt, and they too must adjust accordingly. Cogan brings in outsider Mickey (James Gandolfini), an aging wash up who spends more time swearing , boozing and whoring up a storm than he does getting any work done. Gandolfini ingeniously sends up his capable Tony Soprano character with this bizarro world rendition on the Italian hoodlum, a fat, lazy layabout with bitter shades of the threatening figure he must once of been. Before all this happens, though, we are treated to extended interludes spent with Mendelsohn and Mcnairy, and they both knock it out of the park with their shambling, sweaty, reprehensible presence. Mendelsohn is endlessly watchable, muttering his slovenly dialogue through a curtain of heroin and sleaze. Watch for a tiny, super random cameo from Sam Shepherd as a thug who hassles Liotta. There's a beatdown sequence, and you'll know when it comes, that pushes the limits to extremes. Every punch is felt like a meteor landing, leaving the victim and the viewer aghast. Dominik never throws gimmicks into his work here. Every scene is insistently unique, and the real hero is pacing. The film moves in fits, starts and eruptions with long flatlines in between, until our instinctual knowledge of a narrative truly is lost to the story, with no idea what will happen next. Genius.

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huguespt

How this movie has an over 6 score on here is beyond me. The story line sounds great, some great big name actors, specially with Brad Pitt, I bet he wishes he didn't do this movie. I don't know what went wrong, maybe the directors view as you have a great story line/plot, great seasoned actors and yet it is so slow, well I would never watch it again, I will never recommend it to anyone, it is a waste of good time.I wont bore you with a brief of the story as the story line above tells/sells it well, it just doesn't work on so many levels. Sorry Brad and Ray. Someone on here rated it a 10 and compared/stated it to be as good as the time immemorial mob films of the 70's, I can't believe it. I Should have known better, I am writing/Watched this movie in March of 2016, it was broadcast on a Government Broadcaster, never known for paying the big bucks for good quality US drama and even worse was scheduled at 11pm so that tells you it is of very little resale value as Govt Broadcasters don't like to pay, were Private Broadcasters do pay and that's why you will see the Godfather series still for many years to come on prime television channels, not Govt Broadcasters. This is a dud.

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locytge

After the rarefied Assassination, with its rich period detail and earthy palette, Killing Them Softly seems rather Grey and even ordinary. It bypasses the last 20 years of post- Tarantino gangster movies to recall David Mamet's 1975 play American Buffalo, itself a meditation on recession-era crime and punishment. The Mamet-like dialogue is the most telling example of what's not quite right. Dominik has a cast of excellent American actors here, but most seem to be in service to a script that isn't quite as sharp and perceptive as it thinks it is. Music (and sound itself) is a secondary problem. Throughout the film, TV sets blast out bulletins from rolling news channels, providing a crude running commentary on the larger world. The music choices (The Velvet Underground's Heroin for a narcotic state) are equally clunky.Surprisingly, then, Killing Them Softly does, just about, work. Key to this is yet another superb turn from Pitt, playing another of his indignant outsider antiheroes: movie-star cool, noir-thriller weary and yet driven by something recognizable and psychologically real. It's Pitt who sells this movie as he navigates the mess he's been brought into, a world where gangsters rob their own illegal card games just for a laugh, and where hired hit men, once the samurai-like loners of bygone days, have become flabby, broken-down, unreliable losers.

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