Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, USA, 2012)
Ben Livant:
I will start by noting that I enjoyed Killing Them Softly, but it is not nearly as good as director Andrew Dominik's film about Jesse James and the guy who killed him. KTS has a good sense of humour in the dialogue and there are some elegant pieces of cinematography. But the internal dynamism of the plot is weak due to the quasi-impressionistic story-telling style.
The characterizations are strong but it is difficult to care about any of them in particular because the narrative very intentionally does not affectively hitch its wagon to a central protagonist. Yes, Brad Pitt's character is functionally the star of the show, but hardly emotionally so. Again, this is no accident. The film purposefully takes a detached viewpoint in order to impose a certain intellectual consideration on the proceedings.
As to the content of this intellectual consideration, it is made plain enough. Wiki records that Rotten Tomatoes billboards that the film "is a darkly comic, visceral thriller that doubles as a cautionary tale on capitalism, whose message is delivered with sledgehammer force." This is a bit too general, unless you want to take the USA as simply the most concentrated case of anti-social profit-seeking on the planet.
More than once in the film and from more than one character, it is explicitly stated that there is no society to American society; there is no shared community, only competitive individualism. And it is further stated in the end that the culture of the nation is nothing but ruthless business.
The main device employed to advance the message of the film is the contextualization of the story in the last days of the Bush Jr. administration, during which the banks were bailed out and Obamam delivered his high rhetoric on the campaign trail. Media reportage of this is juxtaposed mis-en-scene as our low-life hoods engage in their sordid deeds. Hence, the Rotten Tomatoes observation of sledgehammer force with respect to theme.
Naturally, given my politics, I quite liked being banged on my head in this manner. Yet, given my politics again, the lack of depth is just as striking to me. I recently found weak the critique of cyber-capitalism and virtual wealth in Cosmopolis. If that critique suffered from middle-class metaphoricity infatuated with po-mo indeterminacy, KTS suffers from working-class literalness over-reliant on direct analogy. In both, what is needed is some realist attention to actual social relations; i.e., better developed class awareness in more mundane, mainstream sociological situations. In the end, both are slumming in minority sub-cultures of the system on behalf of aesthetic experience rather than explication of the system.
KTS is a better film than Cosmopolis, by the way. Well, I liked it a lot more. I do have to mention, though, that there are two scences of violence that for me are over the top. One is too visceral and the other too much poetry in motion. But I am willing to allow that an argument could be made that both of them serve the message. I just do not require such sledgehammer force when it comes depictions of physical brutalty, especially for a message lacking depth. Still, all said, I do recommend the film to you.
Dan Jardine:
Thanks for the recommendation. Killing Them Softly is a noir-ish crime drama with a brain, and for no other reason than that, it should be applauded. Thankfully, it has even more going for it than that. I quite enjoyed the down and dirty story here, as well as the occasionally sizzling dialogue, and the wealth of very good acting on display here, but, like you, I felt that the film's ambitions are not quite realized. Dominik gives us a glimpse of the dirty underbelly of America's economic reality in the transition period between Dubya's failed presidency and Obama's as yet unrealized one, rightly pointing out that despite the optimism exuded by the new president in his acceptance speech, there is very little hope or change for folks down on the street. For them, America remains a place where life is nasty, brutish, and for many, violently short. This the film does very well, as Obama's voiceover juxtaposed with the filth-littered streets says everything we need to know about the contrast between rhetoric and reality.
If you are going to craft a story with an allegorical bent, you need to see it all the way through. You need to attach these characters to the system from which they emerge, and to which they owe compliance. The characters clearly do not have relationships, they have transactions, exchanging money for murder. If only the film had done a better job of attaching the characters to the larger world from which they come. Who are they taking orders from? And who do their bosses take their orders from?
I concur that the film's Tarantino-isms don't quite work. The film is at cross purposes when it elevates the violence to visual poetry, particularly considering that implicit criticism that the film makes of this very same violence. Dominik appears to want to have it both ways, to be wagging his finger at the violence inherent in the system, while depicting it in ways that provide the sort of visceral thrill can override the very sort of critical thought that much of the film clearly wants to engage.
The film's punchline, delivered by Pitt's character in the film's final moments, is a little too on the nose for my tastes, but there have been far more egregious examples of underestimating the cinematic sagacity of your viewing public, so I am willing to indulge Dominik here. However, I think the case can be made that if the film had done a slightly better job of SHOWING this to be the case, it would not have needed to state it so explicitly.
KTS is a good film, a solid addition to Dominik's resume, but a modest disappointment given the greatness of his previous film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Dominik remains a filmmaker to watch.
Ben Livant:
The characterizations are strong but it is difficult to care about any of them in particular because the narrative very intentionally does not affectively hitch its wagon to a central protagonist. Yes, Brad Pitt's character is functionally the star of the show, but hardly emotionally so. Again, this is no accident. The film purposefully takes a detached viewpoint in order to impose a certain intellectual consideration on the proceedings.
As to the content of this intellectual consideration, it is made plain enough. Wiki records that Rotten Tomatoes billboards that the film "is a darkly comic, visceral thriller that doubles as a cautionary tale on capitalism, whose message is delivered with sledgehammer force." This is a bit too general, unless you want to take the USA as simply the most concentrated case of anti-social profit-seeking on the planet.
More than once in the film and from more than one character, it is explicitly stated that there is no society to American society; there is no shared community, only competitive individualism. And it is further stated in the end that the culture of the nation is nothing but ruthless business.
The main device employed to advance the message of the film is the contextualization of the story in the last days of the Bush Jr. administration, during which the banks were bailed out and Obamam delivered his high rhetoric on the campaign trail. Media reportage of this is juxtaposed mis-en-scene as our low-life hoods engage in their sordid deeds. Hence, the Rotten Tomatoes observation of sledgehammer force with respect to theme.
Naturally, given my politics, I quite liked being banged on my head in this manner. Yet, given my politics again, the lack of depth is just as striking to me. I recently found weak the critique of cyber-capitalism and virtual wealth in Cosmopolis. If that critique suffered from middle-class metaphoricity infatuated with po-mo indeterminacy, KTS suffers from working-class literalness over-reliant on direct analogy. In both, what is needed is some realist attention to actual social relations; i.e., better developed class awareness in more mundane, mainstream sociological situations. In the end, both are slumming in minority sub-cultures of the system on behalf of aesthetic experience rather than explication of the system.
KTS is a better film than Cosmopolis, by the way. Well, I liked it a lot more. I do have to mention, though, that there are two scences of violence that for me are over the top. One is too visceral and the other too much poetry in motion. But I am willing to allow that an argument could be made that both of them serve the message. I just do not require such sledgehammer force when it comes depictions of physical brutalty, especially for a message lacking depth. Still, all said, I do recommend the film to you.
Dan Jardine:
Thanks for the recommendation. Killing Them Softly is a noir-ish crime drama with a brain, and for no other reason than that, it should be applauded. Thankfully, it has even more going for it than that. I quite enjoyed the down and dirty story here, as well as the occasionally sizzling dialogue, and the wealth of very good acting on display here, but, like you, I felt that the film's ambitions are not quite realized. Dominik gives us a glimpse of the dirty underbelly of America's economic reality in the transition period between Dubya's failed presidency and Obama's as yet unrealized one, rightly pointing out that despite the optimism exuded by the new president in his acceptance speech, there is very little hope or change for folks down on the street. For them, America remains a place where life is nasty, brutish, and for many, violently short. This the film does very well, as Obama's voiceover juxtaposed with the filth-littered streets says everything we need to know about the contrast between rhetoric and reality.
If you are going to craft a story with an allegorical bent, you need to see it all the way through. You need to attach these characters to the system from which they emerge, and to which they owe compliance. The characters clearly do not have relationships, they have transactions, exchanging money for murder. If only the film had done a better job of attaching the characters to the larger world from which they come. Who are they taking orders from? And who do their bosses take their orders from?
I concur that the film's Tarantino-isms don't quite work. The film is at cross purposes when it elevates the violence to visual poetry, particularly considering that implicit criticism that the film makes of this very same violence. Dominik appears to want to have it both ways, to be wagging his finger at the violence inherent in the system, while depicting it in ways that provide the sort of visceral thrill can override the very sort of critical thought that much of the film clearly wants to engage.
The film's punchline, delivered by Pitt's character in the film's final moments, is a little too on the nose for my tastes, but there have been far more egregious examples of underestimating the cinematic sagacity of your viewing public, so I am willing to indulge Dominik here. However, I think the case can be made that if the film had done a slightly better job of SHOWING this to be the case, it would not have needed to state it so explicitly.
KTS is a good film, a solid addition to Dominik's resume, but a modest disappointment given the greatness of his previous film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Dominik remains a filmmaker to watch.
