I have been remiss lately about keeping up with reviews, and this movie is to blame. I’ve had a difficult time deciding where I stand on it.  On one hand, Andrew Dominik’s low-key mobster film is as intricately written as any Quentin Tarantino movie, with characters utterly believable and convincing.  On the other hand, this very realistic, gritty glimpse into the everyday activities of three low-lifes who try to beat the mob at their own game is about as entertaining as watching paint dry.  It works as a character study but it fails to meet expectations as an action movie or even a thriller.

Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn portray would-be criminals so dopey that it is a wonder their mothers ever let them out of their houses.  But they do a job for a guy, and word gets out, and soon hit man Brad Pitt is on their tails.  Pitt sparks the film as a philosophical guy with a boatload of patience that is sorely tested by the idiots and knuckleheads with whom he works and hunts.  Interestingly, the reason and logic that he brings to the situation (he knows the robbery mastermind, and therefore wants to bring in someone else to whack the guy) completely backfires, so he finds himself doing the job anyway.

Dominik uses violence sparingly but strikingly, with a visual sense that is almost poetic in its destruction, and his dialogue is natural, believable and quite sardonic. The element that bugged me most is his insistence on politicization.  Everywhere that Brad Pitt’s character goes, he is surrounded by television or radio chatter about the re-election of President Obama.  It seems like this chatter is present in every scene, and it is only at the end that Pitt addresses it, telling boss Richard Jenkins that all the talk about people being equal is foolishness; America is a business, and always has been.  And Pitt the hit man wants to be paid for his work.  Now.

Maybe Dominik is right about America, and his movie is a visual description of just how morally bankrupt we have become in the name of “business.”  That last speech lays out his case with power and insight, and it brings things together in a manner that makes sense, but it is a message that I despise.  So I am of two minds about Killing Them Softly.  It is undeniably well made, but I pretty much hate what it says about America and I hated most of the main characters (especially those of Ben Mendelsohn and James Gandolfini).  ☆ ☆.  26 December 2012.