Movie Reviews: Killing Them Softly

They may not make ’em like they used to, but Andrew Dominik can’t be faulted for his ambition in Killing Them Softly (18s), an adaptation of George V Higgins’ 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, which harks back to that decade’s classic crime flicks in its fully rounded characterisations of thieves, lowlifes and killers. When a gang knocks off a Mob-protected card game, hitman Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) is called in to track down the perpetrators and dispatch them in his inimitable way, a unique style from which the film takes its title.

With the setting updated to a grim, post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans during Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign, Dominick’s tendency to unleash moments of unexpected violence keeps the audience on the edge of its seat and makes a mockery of Obama’s pleas for ‘change’ and ‘hope’ on behalf of ‘community’, as the nonchalance with which the violence is delivered, and the businesslike attitude to death, highlights the divide between political rhetoric and the reality of the street. But while it’s bleak, it’s also hilarious.