Hit details: Brad Pitt and Richard Jenkins in a scene from the film, Killing Them Softly.
NEW Zealand-born director Andrew Dominik likes tough-guy talk.
He made a memorable debut with Chopper a dozen years ago and Killing Them Softly, his third feature, is also focused on larcenous men whose criminal instincts are as powerful as their urge to spin a yarn.
Brad Pitt, who starred in Dominik's contemplative The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, plays Jackie, a hitman who is smooth, professional and in control. It's all about the money for Jackie, who voices his distaste for touchy-feely executions. He'd rather shoot from a distance.
Jackie's been brought in to manage the killings of a trio of foolhardy small-timers who have robbed an illegal poker game run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). One of the miscreants is Frankie (Scoot McNairy), newly released from prison and desperate to make a big score. Another is a sweaty Australian dog thief called Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) who wants to buy a load of heroin and become a dealer. They're a memorable pair of fools.
Brad Pitt, who starred in Dominik's contemplative The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, plays Jackie, a hitman who is smooth, professional and in control. It's all about the money for Jackie, who voices his distaste for touchy-feely executions. He'd rather shoot from a distance.
Jackie's been brought in to manage the killings of a trio of foolhardy small-timers who have robbed an illegal poker game run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). One of the miscreants is Frankie (Scoot McNairy), newly released from prison and desperate to make a big score. Another is a sweaty Australian dog thief called Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) who wants to buy a load of heroin and become a dealer. They're a memorable pair of fools.
Richard Jenkins plays the Mob factotum who hires Jackie. Jenkins has a municipal look that sees him often cast as straight-laced types, and here he plays the gangland equivalent of a public servant, expressing frustration with upper management. It seems even the underworld's a bureaucracy. Rounding out a stellar cast is James Gandolfini as a maudlin, alcoholic assassin whose aggressive self-pity recalls Tony Soprano at his worst.
The film gives each member of its overwhelmingly male cast a chance to express themselves in menacing and funny dialogue scenes, punctuated by stylish explosions of violence.
Dominik based his script on a 1974 crime novel by George V Higgins called Cogan's Trade. He has set the action in 2008 during the financial meltdown that was George W Bush's parting gift to the incoming Obama administration. A gritty crime tale becomes a microcosm of American values in the noughties.
It's a taut and blackly funny thriller unfolding in the moral vacuum of a country where corporate crime goes unpunished and the logical response of the individual is to grab for the money by any means possible.
Opens Thursday
- Nick Dent is Group Editor, Time Out Australia
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