Andrew Dominik
Killing Them Softly

What is America? Andrew Dominik envisions it as a small cluster of businessmen, of white collars playing their cards around a table, investing their money in deals. Then there is the citizen, what one would call the "normal people," and there are their economic difficulties, the inability and impossibility to adapt to a state framework that seems distant, "closed." Suspicion, opportunism, and business reign supreme: just think of the main character of the film, that Jackie Cogan played by a Brad Pitt once again in form (his second collaboration with Dominik after "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford").

There is almost a basis for an "inquiry film" on American politics, but when narrowing the genres "Killing Them Softly" is a gangster movie. Cynical, cold, ruthless, subdued but still a gangster movie. It is so in the plot and how it unfolds: the killer Cogan is hired to find and kill those who robbed the illegal game organized by Markie (Ray Liotta). A classic setup both in story and tone for a film that suffers from indecision: at times it seems to lean towards a typically "Mann-esque" thriller, other times it mimics Tarantino (especially in the long dialogues), not forgetting the sexual and psychedelic perversions of Abel Ferrara. It's in this underlying "ambiguity" that the real problem of KTS lies: not having a well-defined soul seems to have led Dominik to linger too much on the script he himself wrote. The result is a work in which the screentime gets "crowded" into long dialogued sequences, which are often brilliant and ironic, but other times feel forced.

Andrew Dominik, already the author of the splendid "The Assassination of Jesse James," demonstrates considerable directing skills, and the slow-motion used for one of the murders is confirmation of this. Just as the staging of the entire film appears perfect, the spaces, the shots. Everything is perfect from a strictly formal point of view, thanks also to the choice of a "dry" direction, decidedly crisp and devoid of particular arabesques. Interesting is the parallelism between the world depicted in the film and the political one we are constantly reminded of by the speeches of Obama, McCain, and George W. Bush on the radio and television. A clear attack on the star-spangled governing system emerges, and the opening scene of the robbery almost seems like an allegory of the "great" American financiers, suddenly dethroned and robbed by the people, composed of the last, the have-nots. It is no coincidence that the final sequence is a real attack on one of the nation's founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson. America is just business, and the very figure of the protagonist is the embodiment of that: killing is his job, and he must be paid for it. He is not a gangster but a consultant, an armed hand that does his duty trying to get involved as little as possible, perhaps directing a colleague and friend like Mickey (an excellent James Gandolfini) to do a job on his behalf.

Andrew Dominik is a filmmaker we will hear about. "Killing Them Softly" is his third feature film and possesses the typical strengths and weaknesses of the genre. What really penalizes it is the excessive intricacy and the not entirely perfect linearity of the story, with the final scene tasked with closing a circle that otherwise is not very perfect. But despite these flaws, we are facing a work that has its own soul, that knows how to hurt and make one reflect, that entertains and engages. Dominik has ideas and personality and with "Killing Them Softly" he has demonstrated it once again.