Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik) [45 points / 4 votes]
"In a better world, there would be at least a half-dozen ‘70s movies based on the works of George V. Higgins, but in this world, there’s only one: The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Of course, even if there were a half-dozen more Higgins movies, it’s hard to imagine any of them doing it better than the 1974 Peter Yates film starring Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle. Higgins’ down-on-their-luck tough guys, low-rent crimes, grungy Boston locations, and most of all, his hard-bitten, often hilarious, sometimes impenetrable thickets of dialogue all made it to the screen intact. But the movie disappeared for decades before Criterion finally gave it a new life on home video in 2009, and no more Higgins adaptations would follow until Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly (based on the 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade) reached theaters last November.
Dominik’s film didn’t meet with any warmer a reception from audiences than Yates’ had, but it’s a worthy follow-up in every way. It’s the best sort of adaptation, in that it fuses an extremely faithful reading of Higgins’ book with a genuinely exciting cinematic vision. In its dialogue scenes played out in taverns and cars and hotel rooms, it feels like a ‘70s movie, but its action sequences are rendered in a contemporary, muscular filmmaking style undreamed of in 1974. Dominik’s script keeps much of Higgins’ distinctive dialogue intact, but it also introduces what is not so much a subtext as an overlay that ties the movie’s self-contained world to more universal themes.
Dominik sets Killing Them Softly in 2008 on the eve of the presidential election; then, as now, the economy is much on everyone’s mind. He shot the film in New Orleans but retains all of the geographical references to Boston and its surroundings from the Higgins novel. As a result, the movie is set not so much in a real place as a mental landscape with a pervasive air of end-times-of-America rot. In this not-quite-reality, lowlife hoodlums listen to NPR on their car radios, and even the seediest bars have C-SPAN playing on the televisions. The talking heads and politicians we overhear act as a sort of Greek chorus, commenting on the movie’s action. (Example: after a couple of small-timers knock over a poker game and throw the entire criminal underworld into chaos, we hear George W. Bush proclaiming that we must not allow the irresponsible actions of a few to take down our entire system.) Some viewers found this device intrusive, but I see it as a rather Altmanesque touch; it’s there if you want to pay attention, but easy enough to ignore.
The economy under scrutiny in Killing Them Softly is that of a closed society: white criminal males. The only woman who gets any screentime at all is credited only as “Hooker” -- in this world, she’s just another transaction. That’s how Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) sees his work as an enforcer; the title comes not from the Roberta Flack song but from Cogan’s approach to killing for hire. He likes to do it from a distance, make it as impersonal as possible, just like the big banks. Pitt delivers a wry turn as this most practical of gangsters; he makes every matter of life and death sound like a reasonable negotiation.
Like our own capitalistic system, the underworld in Killing Them Softly has a corporate structure. We never see those at the top and they never get their hands dirty. Middle-management is represented by Richard Jenkins, who acts as Cogan’s go-between (he might as well be a corporate accountant). Then there’s the 99%, which Dominik populates with a terrific collection of character actors, some of whom echo gangster pop culture’s past (James Gandolfini, Vincent Curatola and Max Casella from The Sopranos, Ray Liotta from Goodfellas, rapper Slaine from Ben Affleck’s Boston crime pictures), some of whom make their mark here for the first time (most notably the terrific Scoot McNairy as nervous stick-up man Frankie).
Unlike many of this year’s bloated Oscar contenders, Killing Them Softly weighs in at a lean 97 minutes and yet still finds the time for Higgins’ gift of gab. That’s particularly true in Gandolfini’s scenes as Mickey, a hired gun who proves to be a rare bad bet on Cogan’s part. After so many years as Tony Soprano, it’s hard to believe Gandolfini could turn in another distinctive mobster turn, but he pulls it off here. Mickey is a melancholy figure, past his prime and living in his memories of better days; brought into town to pull off a hit, he does nothing but drink, cheat hookers out of their tips, and regale a bemused Cogan with his life story.
The lyrical interludes are punctuated by bursts of gut-bucket violence. Some of it, as in the hit on Liotta’s character, is so beautifully abstracted as to be Lynchian (a connection made explicit in that scene through the use of Ketty Lester’s “Love Letters” on the soundtrack). At other times, it’s simply brutal and matter-of-fact. Either way, the result is the same, as the shots of naked bodies being loaded into drawers in a morgue make plain. “In America, you’re on your own,” the cynical Cogan sneers while the TV plays Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. But Dominik knows what Higgins knew: When the end comes, we’re all in it together." - Scott Von Doviak
No comments:
Post a Comment