Killing Them Softly - Blu-ray Review

'Andrew Dominik has made something which fits fairly closely with Arbitrage and Margin Call, the two best films to come out of the economic downturn so far'

To say that Killing Them Softly 'stars' Brad Pitt is roughly as accurate as saying that it stars Barack Obama. The US president is an almost constant presence; in the background of scenes, talking on the radio or television. Mr Jolie, meanwhile, doesn't appear until the start of the film's second half.

When he does arrive, Pitt is more representative of something than here as an actual character. A middle man with ideas, he's the action version of Richard Jenkins business-savvy middle-man. Together, they are, like many of Killing Them Softly's misfit characters, a representation of how the US' crumbling economy starts to chip away at people. These two seem to know what to do but their absent superiors are paralysed by indecision, waiting to see how things play out and shape up.

That should point you towards the fact that the best thing about Killing Them Softly is that it isn't your typical gangster film. Whilst it has plenty of the requisite components (brutality, guns, nefarious double-crosses), Andrew Dominik has made something which fits much more closely with Arbitrage and Margin Call, the two best films to come out of the economic downturn so far. Killing Them Softly does something new and takes the gangster film into the territory of the the metaphorical. It's a refreshing change.

Also a refreshing change is the distinctly unfiltered cynicism, summed up in Pitt's final lines and the best scene of the film. It's not shot at you with malice, or from a position of condescension, but this is a bleak picture of people under economic austerity; whether brought about by their own shortcomings or the decisions of others.

Somewhere amongst them all is the sadly recently deceased James Gandolfini, who as has been typical in his more recent roles, subverts his gangster stereotyping and plays a hitman who can't bring himself to work properly and who contradicts himself as to why more often than he takes a swig of alcohol, which is very often. As usual, he's wonderful, as are Pitt and Jenkins, though the arguable star (apart from Obama) is Scoot McNairy, whose first half is more thrilling and often funny than Pitt's second.

By Sam Turner. Sam is editor of Film Intel, and can usually be found behind a keyboard with a cup of tea. He likes entertaining films and dislikes the other kind. He's on Google+, Twitter and several places even he doesn't yet know about.