By: debbie lynn elias
Adapted by writer/director Andrew Dominik from Charles V. Higgins’ 1984 crime novel Cogan’s Trade, KILLING THEM SOFTLY moves from Higgins’ 1970’s mob-infested Boston to 2008 and the economic collapse in Anytown (or Everytown), U.S.A., where even the mob seems to be having some financial difficulties within its own governmental structure.
Leading the way is Jackie Cogan, mob enforcer brought in on contract to “take care” of a couple of nickel dime hoods who rolled a mob-protected poker game run by Markie Trattman. Sadly for Trattman, he’s not the brightest bulb in the box and got caught some years back with his own hand in the cookie jar thus now leading the mob higher-ups to want him eliminated as well. After all, Markie could have now committed a repeat of his prior indiscretions but, at the very least, he’s an incompetent who let the game be infiltrated and taken down by small time Johnny Amato and his leg men, Frankie and Russell. Either way is a win-win for the mob.
But, as he and Trattman are friends, Cogan has a problem with personally taking him down so he calls in Mickey, a washed up down on his luck hitman more interested in booze, broads and cocaine.
And while Cogan likes to call his own shots and stands on his mantra of taking out his assignments at a distance, i.e., “killing them softly”, the economic realities of being frugal with mob money in order to execute his orders may require him to get his hands a little dirtier this time. Seems that even the mob isn’t recession-proof as Cogan is continually reminded by his liaison, the messenger from the higher-ups, a man known only as Driver.
The cast reads like a “who’s who” of mob movies as writer/director Andrew Dominik not only reteams with Brad Pitt with whom he worked on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but brings in all the heavy-hitters, among them, – James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Max Casella and Sam Shepherd, and then ices the cake with Richard Jenkins, Scott McNairy and Ben Mendehlson. According to Dominik, “My idea was to do it like an old studio picture and to cast ‘types’, instantly recognizable types. So you’ve got the fat guy, the goofy looking skinny dude, you’ve got the sweaty Australian guy – almost like a cartoon. And then to typecast it with tough guys. So you’ve got ‘Tony Soprano’ and ‘Henry Hill’ in there, too. And the audience instantly understands who those people are. I guess in the case of Jim [Gandolfini] and Ray [Liotta] they kind of play against type a little bit but if they weren’t that type to being with they couldn’t play against type.”
As great as Pitt and Jenkins are as Cogan and Driver, respectively, if there is one performance that just explodes, it’s that of Ray Liotta. As Markie Trattman, Liotta plays against type and while still a mobster, has a yellow-streak a mile long running down his back. “[R]eally impressed with Ray”, Dominik finds that “A lot of male actors of a certain age are very much aren’t going to really get down and pussy-out like he did. But [Liotta] was just fantastic and such a trooper. And so determined to make that [shoot-out] sequence absolutely skin-crawlingly repulsive.”
Disturbing to watch is James Gandolfini. As the slovenly has-been hit man Mickey, Gandolfini goes to previously unseen lengths of visual disgust as he eschews the role, salivating and relishing every coked-out, boozed-out, whored-out flaw of the bathrobe wearing mobster.
Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, the key to KILLING THEM SOFTLY is the characters. Richly textured and authentic, Dominik doesn’t miss a beat not only bringing each one to life, but in having a purpose for each. There is nothing superfluous about any character or any story element. Describing the plot found in Cogan’s Trade as a”sort of a Crime and Punishment type story”, Dominik ” quickly realized that it was the story of an economic crisis and it had some parallels with the current economic situation in the world in that it was a criminal economy, it was supported by gambling and collapsed because of a failure of regulations. And [then] when they had to clean it up, they had to deal with not only the problem but the perceptions of the problem so it was a political story, in its way. Although it was a very simplistic microcosm, it was a microcosm of what was going in the world at the time.”
Carrying the tone of character and story into his visuals, Dominik called on the talents of cinematographer Greig Fraser. Using for the first time a new Kodak 500T 5230 film stock, the visual result is stunning. Richly textured, the stock allowed greater range of lighting and play which bodes well for the very nature of the film. Intimate mid-shots of dialogue-heavy scenes between Pitt and Jenkins immerse the audience into the story as if sitting in the back seat of the car with them, and further showcasing the intelligence of the dialogue and overall political metaphor.
One of the most breathtaking scenes I have ever seen on film involves a shoot-out with ray Liotta’s character, Markie Trattman. Utilizing slo-mo, real-time, intense close-ups and long shots, multiple cameras and camera types all melded in a subtlely nuanced montage, this sequence is a true visual stunner, capable of standing alone as an art house short. According to Dominik, “We [Dominik and Fraser] basically sat around and drew pictures and took photographs of the ideas, the sort of thing we wanted to see in the sequence. Then we pulled every toy out of the truck to make it work. . .We’ve got cameras running at a bunch of different speeds. We even got an old ballistics camera which shoots about 12,000 frames per second. You don’t even run film through it. It’s kind of like a spinning mirror effect that throws images onto the negative to be able to capture bullets coming of guns and stuff like that.” Heart-stopping excellence!
Describing KILLING THEM SOFTLY as “the idea was that the whole world is talking to you. That the foreground story is commenting on the background story, the background story is commenting on the foreground story”, Dominik used music to create some distance for the characters and the audience, all to great result.
An incredibly polished art house level film, KILLING THEM SOFTLY is riveting from start to finish thanks to an intelligently written script, compelling metaphor and analogy, rapier dialogue particularly between Pitt and Jenkins’ characters, flawless performances by Liotta, Pitt and Jenkins, and a visual texture that embodies the tonal essence of a 40’s or 50’s film noir crime thriller.
KILLING THEM SOFTLY just kills it…..
Written and Directed by Andrew Dominik based on the novel Cogan’s Trade by Charles V. Higgins.
Cast: Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini, Max Casella, Sam Shepherd, Richard Jenkins, Scott McNairy and Ben Mendehlson
