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 Released 2012 Directed by Andrew Dominik Running time: 97 minutes Congratulations, goon - you have entered the ranks of an elite club. Stop! Don't touch anything! You don't get to join, merely observe. These are the hallowed halls of films that have received an F on Cinemascore. Sometimes when this happens it is because the movie is what you'd expect. I'm not going to use my spot on Movie of the Month to save the dignity of The Box or Fear Dot Com. Maybe later. But there are some films on there that are actually fantastic, and have been received so poorly because marketing departments had no clue how to sell it. You look me in the eye and tell me you could have done a better job trying to sell Aronofsky's mother! - I don't think you can. So alongside great times like 2006's remake of The Wicker Man, we have Killing Them Softly, a 2012 adaptation of the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade, adapted for our times.  And timely it is. KTS is mostly concerned with the fallout of the 2008 economic collapse that came to define the late years of the Bush administration and the early years of Obama's. As the real estate market swallowed itself whole and auto manufacturers that we built our entire infrastructure with a dependence on nearly evaporated overnight, the unemployment rate hit ten percent and 235,000 businesses across the country were forced to close. The Obama administration's response to this was, despite his liberal reputation, textbook Reaganomics - issue massive cash payouts to the wealthy corporatists, depending on them to deliver jobs to the destitute. Long story short, America still hasn't healed the wounds of the 2008 recession, and some argue it directly lead to the current Trump administration. Considering this may be the last full month we're under that institution, I'd better get this post out.  If you're looking for a 1:1 analogy in the text of Killing Them Softly, you're going to be disappointed - but what it does better than most films is an acknowledgement of how the political informs the personal, and vice-versa. The recession is on everyone's minds in this script. The working class can't afford to pay anyone for anything, and the ruling class loves having an excuse to pay only a pittance. No wonder the movie ends with what is effectively a wage dispute. Above all else, Killing Them Softly is so accurate at capturing end-of-history American malaise. Nobody in this film is happy, nobody really wins at the end. Much like the protagonist's final words, which you may have had spoiled for you already due to their memetic reputation, what the film portrays is a transaction, void of honor or humanity. In order to keep the stability of an underground poker ring, a hitman is hired to kill a perpetrator everyone knows didn't do it - but the games won't continue until he's out of the picture. It's a lie, and everyone knows it is, but the market demands blood. By the time this film is over, several lives have been ended in order to keep the games of the rich and powerful afloat, purely for the sake of security theater... okay, maybe there's an analogy after all. One thing I admire about the film is its use of the news as background noise. At first, this seems like a skull-smashing hammer of exposition and theme injection - there's an eye-rolling scene where a man about to deliver punishment for the film's central crime leaves his vehicle, which shuts down just in time for the radio to deliver a host's words of demanding accountability. He was speaking about Goldman Sachs, but the point is clear. Sometimes this is obnoxious, but the angle I have to appreciate is the way KTS depicts how Americans have made the news into their daily backdrop as opposed to music. No longer do we sit through a song we've always hated because we find the silence more unbearable - even without 24-hour cable news or internet streams, Americans are constantly tuned into how our country is moving, often causing large populations to miss the forest for the trees, as we focus on minute scandalous details over greater, more banal evil. Twitter users get made fun of for "doomscrolling" a lot, but the truth is, we've all been doing it for the past two decades.  Brad Pitt is the star hire made to market the film here, which ironically wound up cratering it, as audiences expected a movie where the handsome movie star delivers slick assassinations and got... not that. When I think of KTS, I think of my first time seeing it during its theatrical run. A friend of mine, more into movies for the gratification, brought me solely based on the poster of Pitt aiming a shotgun - only to have to ask me if I could explain the plot to him something like once every ten minutes. My friend isn't stupid, he was just lied to by bean counters. To this day I still sometimes think about how apt that is for the content of the film itself. It's slow, it's challenging, it's not at all what they sold. But in this package is an overlooked gem with one of the most accurate assessments of the numbing agent that American news has become. To watch Killing Them Softly is to share in its hopelessness - but hey, sometimes a feel-bad film makes me feel a lot better. Killing Them Softly is currently available on Netflix. Previous Movies of the Month Pirate Jet fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Oct 13, 2020 |
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Oct 13, 2020 07:12
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| # ? May 6, 2024 15:05 |
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KTS is really great and also extremely funny. I can see why some people didn't like it though esp if they went in expecting The Amazing Adventures of Hitman Brad Pitt costarring Tony Soprano! or whatever the trailers sold it as. The best way to describe KTS is take every mob movie ever made, skipped the first 90+ min where it shows how awesome it is to make tons of cash and gently caress hot women ect then go straight to the end where it tries to sell how terrible the life is and stretch that part into a feature length film. Every scene of Richard Jenkins acting miserable is fantastic. Everyone in this is great. Ben Mendelsohn plays possibly the greasiest character ever put on screen.
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Oct 13, 2020 08:13
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I remember liking this one. I think it would've resonated more (and been more popular) had it come out in 2016-2019 rather than 2012. It was four years ahead of its time in some respects as it feels very antithetical to where a lot of people were at in 2012 (or didn't realize fully). It definitely conjures up films from the 1970s where the criminals are not glamorized at all. So many films of today really miss this. Criminals in a lot of 1990s-2010s films look like serene GQ models living glamorous lives rather than grotesque and violent people that no one wants to encounter. Films of the 1970s and 1980s portrayed them with ease. 1973s Scarecrow comes to mind. The kind of people that'll stab you in the back for looking at them the wrong way.
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Oct 13, 2020 23:37
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God i love that sawed off shotgun
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Oct 17, 2020 09:19
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I also think it's important to point out that this was Dominik's first film after The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, so it was actually pretty highly anticipated. I think a lot of people were hoping for a more expansive, large scale gangster film instead of something where like half the runtime takes place in dive bars and hotel rooms. The movie is great though because it's perfectly cast. Every scene has top level actors doing amazing work, and it's one of the last great performances by Gandolfini.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:27
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What's the point of Tony Soprano's character? He doesn't do anything, spends the whole time complaining while banging hookers, and ultimately we don't really see him anymore. What is he analogous to? The best I could think of was the movie's take on boomers who come in with loud fanfare but fail to deliver. Why even include him? I loved the tension in the robbery scenes, as well as the gratuitous slow motion death sequences which reminded me of Dredd. It was a slow burn, but not to the point of detriment. Definitely had some funny moments too.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:29
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Bioshuffle posted:What's the point of Tony Soprano's character? He doesn't do anything, spends the whole time complaining while banging hookers, and ultimately we don't really see him anymore. What is he analogous to? The best I could think of was the movie's take on boomers who come in with loud fanfare but fail to deliver. I don't know if he's directly analogous to anyone but James Gandolfini eerily and prophetically channeled aspects of Harvey Weinstein himself. A disheveled, dirty old man in a bathrobe living out of a hotel room. And the reports of his casting couch etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6TNgqIAYyE It's another look at a depraved character living a depraved lifestyle. PS The film itself was distributed by The Weinstein Company. Basebf555 posted:I also think it's important to point out that this was Dominik's first film after The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, so it was actually pretty highly anticipated. I think a lot of people were hoping for a more expansive, large scale gangster film instead of something where like half the runtime takes place in dive bars and hotel rooms. It definitely feels like a film made by someone outside the US. To make a film that takes a jaded outlook on both R and D ideology simultaneously is a dangerous career choice.
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Oct 21, 2020 22:27
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Bioshuffle posted:What's the point of Tony Soprano's character? He doesn't do anything, spends the whole time complaining while banging hookers, and ultimately we don't really see him anymore. What is he analogous to? The best I could think of was the movie's take on boomers who come in with loud fanfare but fail to deliver. I don’t think the film works as a direct analogy where you can say, like, Mickey is x and Jackie is Y. I think Mickey is an illustration of the “American malaise” I tried to focus on in the OP. Mickey is a certified felon at that point - he’s been caught, he’s served at least some of a sentence, he’s on the prison rolls and off the voting ones. Mickey officially has zero reason to give a poo poo about politics anymore and no causes left to fight; all that’s left for him is debauchery and then death. If anything I view him as what Jackie will eventually become - he’s also become completely disengaged from the fight for progress, understandably so. He has zero faith in institutions and is just trying to eke out a living under an oppressive regime. It’s just that Mickey is much more successful at it.
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Oct 21, 2020 22:39
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Memorable track used in the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WYv-6OpbGc Pirate Jet posted:These are the hallowed halls of films that have received an F on Cinemascore. This is the full list AFAIK: Eye of the Beholder (1999) Lucky Numbers (2000) Lost Souls (2000) Dr. T and the Women (2000) Darkness (2002) Fear Dot Com (2002) Solaris (2002) In the Cut (2003) Alone in the Dark (2005) Wolf Creek (2005) Bug (2006) The Wicker Man (2006) I Know Who Killed Me (2007) Disaster Movie (2008) The Box (2009) The Devil Inside (2012) Silent House (2012) Killing Them Softly (2012) mother! (2017) The Turning (2020) The Grudge (2020) I've only seen four so I have some work to do.
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Oct 21, 2020 22:40
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Zogo posted:Memorable track used in the film: I remember feardotcom's website being feardotcom.com and i get a chuckle out of that roughly once a month
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Oct 22, 2020 03:14
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banned from Starbucks posted:Everyone in this is great. Ben Mendelsohn plays possibly the greasiest character ever put on screen. Yeah, it's the first thing I really remember him in. He's impressively skuzzy even by the standards of the movie. He's found his spot in blockbusters playing weaselly executives, where that layer of scumbag tries to hide beneath a more presentable exterior, but here he's all in. I hadn't realized this movie had bombed so hard. Shame. It's really something special.
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Oct 26, 2020 00:35
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