Killng Them Softley (2012)

Based on the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade by author George V. Higgins (so that's why it reminded me of The Friends of Eddie Coyle), this was kind of an odd choice for a Brad Pitt vehicle. Pitt plays Jackie Cogan a hit man for the mob who spends most of the movie acting as a kind of agent for another hit man, the down on his luck Mickey(James Gandolfini). In fact Cogan is kind of a secondary character for much of the film, the central focus of the story being on a due of small time hoods (Scoot McNairy & Ben Mendelsohn), who get in over there heads working for Johnny "Squirrel" Amato (Vince Curatola) pulling off a heist against a gambling den run by the ill fated Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta in the Ray Liotta role).

I liked that the film focused on such rather pathetic low level players in the seeming under world of this unspecified city, which could be anywhere from New Orleans to Detroit. At the same time I kind of wondered why, I mean what was the point, a character study yes, but not about very interesting characters. The violence is brief, though fairly intense, the movies plays as a series of dialogue scenes, most of them too long, punctuated by brief pieces of action. I suppose they were going for a Tarantino effect with this, and while I have a hard time pointing to any specific thing in this film as being out and out bad, my gut reaction to it was that I didn't much care for it, maybe it was trying to hard, watering down the small core of its substance to much.

The film is set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crises, this is to make it seem more relevant I guess, to provide an intriguing but not entirely effective counterpoint of a truly large level hold up of the entire financial system going on in contrast to the relatively small matter of a couple million in mob money. As I look back on the film I find myself liking it more in hindsight then I did sitting through it, maybe I just wasn't in the mood. At the same time I'm not the only one I know who found the film disappointing, I think the movie thought that playing around with genera conventions just enough to make it 'different' would make it somehow 'better'. Instead this felt disappointingly average. **1/2