Killing Them Softly (18)

HHHH

Dir: Andrew Dominik

With: Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins

Runtime: 97 minutes

BUSY with the many woes of the global financial crisis, no-one has stopped to think about how these hard times are affecting the Mob. This is an especially selfish oversight among cinemagoers, given how much entertainment and profit the industry has mined from the Cosa Nostra over the years. It is horribly ungrateful of us, but as they say in Sopranos country, whaddya gonna do?

Worry no longer. Andrew Dominik, creator of 2007's The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, is here to set history straight with Killing Them Softly, a crime drama that provides an electrifying take on modern America at the same time as it satisfies all the usual requirements of a Mob movie: eyeball-scorching violence, disgustingly cool hitmen, spectacularly grubby low-life and endless cynicism. There might be a moral lesson in there too, if you care to look hard enough.

If that is not a tempting enough offer, Dominik has assembled a cast that marries the Mob acting A-list of yesteryear (Ray Liotta and James Gandolfini among them) with genre new boys Scoot McNairy (Monsters), Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) and Ben Mendersohn (Animal Kingdom). Sealing the deal is Brad Pitt, also Dominik's leading man in The Assassination. As in Moneyball, Pitt delivers one of his grooviest performances to date. Yet another Mob movie, one that goes nowhere surprising, but what a gang Dominik has assembled to get there.

The movie opens in 2008 to the sound of a speech by president-elect Barack Obama. The talk is of hope and change but the vision is of wasteland America, closed-up shops and abandoned houses. Through this urban desert shuffles Mendersohn's Russell, criminal and junkie. An acquaintance, Frankie (McNairy), has a proposition: rob the card game run by Ray Liotta's Markie. A risky notion at the best of times, but Frankie has reason to think luck is on their side. Matters turn out to be more complicated than he imagines, which is where Pitt, Gandolfini and Jenkins enter the tale.

Cogan's Trade, the George V Higgins novel on which Killing Them Softly is based, was published in 1974 and was very much a product of that bleak era. It suited the hard, hopeless times then, and, with some nudges and winks from Dominik, it suits them now.

Dominik depicts the modern Mob as a struggling business like many another. If there is trouble in a branch office, head office (here represented by Jenkins) sends in a troubleshooter (Pitt) to sort things out. With his concerns about costs and process, the Jenkins character, known only as "Driver", is hilariously and bizarrely middle-management in his outlook, a man just as worried about budgets and office politics as any paper-clip counter.

If Driver is middle management, Jackie is a supervisor and the rest are strictly worker bees. Everyone has to do their job or face the consequences. Even Gandolfini's Mickey, at one time an equal of Jackie, is at risk of redundancy if things go wrong.

As the story builds and plays out, Dominik comes back time and again to his business theme. Just in case the message is not getting through, he shoehorns in a George W Bush address on the growing banking crisis. The unspoken question is clear: in a society such as this, who are the bigger criminals? The ones who mug you in an alley, or the ones who sit behind a computer screen on Wall Street and gamble away your pension? While heavy-handed – the whole film is guilty of that vice – it is effective.

Dominik is good on the gabby stuff, with the exchanges between Jenkins and Pitt, Pitt and Gandolfini, Pitt and everybody, sugary and spicy treats. It is during one of these conversations that Pitt explains the hassles of this kind of business, and how it is always better to employ the gentle approach. Hence the film's title.

Even in these post-Sopranos, post-Wire days, there has to be more to a crime drama than chat, and Dominik delivers several startling set pieces. One of them is a spectacular example of high style applied to the most grisly of events. This is designer violence ramped up to the utmost: horribly distasteful yet grotesquely compelling too. As for the violence in general, that 18 certificate is not there for fun.

There are many swaggering performances to recommend here. Liotta has a lot of retro charm, with Jenkins once again proving himself the most subtle of comedians. The youngsters – McNairy, the new Steve Buscemi in my book; and Mendersohn – are terrific.

Even though it is a very crowded stage, it is Pitt, cool hand Brad himself, who impresses most. If the job of being a true movie star is to make every character compelling, however loathsome that character may be, Pitt does the business. Give that worker an employee of the month award.