Killing Them Softly Movie Reviews

Brad Pitt was nominally the star of Andrew Dominik’s last film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, despite being a mythic absence in it as much as he was a presence, and certainly not the protagonist. Killing Them Softly, Dominik’s bleakly electrifying hit-man thriller, parcels Pitt out with even stricter economy, keeping him off-screen for half an hour, and also slanting all his early scenes in favour of the other actors

Killing Them Softly (KTS) isn't a movie for the faint-hearted - but despite its guns and gore, it isn't an all-out action flick either. Instead, it inhabits a shadowy half-land between thriller and dark comedy, where wanna-be gangsters wear washing-up gloves to a heist, a hit-man dismisses a businessman's fear of murder - preferring severe beating instead - as "total corporate mentality", an assassin says, "Killing someone can get embarrassing. Touchy-feely

Watching Killing Them Softly is an experience very similar to watching Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. They’re both slow and artistic films, relying heavily on visual style. And yet the strength of both films lies as much in the actors’ performances as in their subliminal storytelling. But of course, Killing… has a larger cultural impact, with its underlying political themes of American capitalism. But it’s not spelt out for the audience. To appreciate this film

On the outside, the films of director Andrew Dominik come with the promise of violent entertainment for an adult audience. Even their names are sanguinary. There was, first, Chopper, which featured an attempted assassination in prison, a self-inflicted ear mutilation, and shootings too numerous to count. Then came The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, surely the Western with the most explicative title

BASED on George V Higgins's novel Cogan's Trade centred in the 1970s, Killing Them Softly would like to believe it has reinvented that story about recession and the mob to fit into these uncertain economic times. "Would like to" being the operative word. Apart from a series of speeches running in the background, by then President George W Bush, then Democratic candidate Barack Obama, and then experts wringing their hands about the financial mess

Mob movie traditions bounce all over the place in Andrew Dominik's neat, nihilistic Killing Them Softly, a film that engages only in parts and, while well performed, is considerably weighed down by its own inertness. Much is borrowed from the crime classics -- character traits, exposition technique, chatty hitmen, and even a winding tracking shot, albeit in reverse -- but Dominik bravely attempts to subvert the genre by winding it down, by showing us

If 'Gangs of Wasseypur' were directed by Prakash Jha, the result would likely be something similar to 'Killing Them Softly' - a movie with guns and flying guts, set against a political and economic backdrop and a loud and clear moral of the story. But, save for its stellar actors and gorgeously grim murder scenes, 'Killing Them Softly' is mostly chatter, chatter and not enough bang, bang

Australian writer-director Andrew Dominik is perhaps best known for his slow, contemplative and slow 2007 work of art, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – a film whose length lived up to its long-winded title (and did I mention it was slow?). But the assured, masterful direction by Dominik compelled me to seek out his debut film, Chopper. The 2000 release was one of the very first Australian films I’ve seen