IMDB Score – 6.3
Rotten Tomato Score – 75%

Directed By – Andrew Dominik
Starring – Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins, and Sam Shepard

Jackie Cogan is an enforcer hired to restore order after three dumb guys rob a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse.

For the record, I did not come up with the synopsis. Three dumb guys? Yes, well they’re dumb, but come on IMDB you can do better than that.

I’m a huge, HUGE fan of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The film was just a perfectly paced, photographed, and told story and was a perfect piece to complete the trifecta to No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. If you ever have eight hours to kill, a marathon of those three films is really cool. I’m also a fan of his first film which is the vastly underseen Chopper with Eric Bana. Dominik wrote the screenplay for his newest film based off a novel by George V. Higgins called “Cogan’s Trade”. It ended up being a very conflicted watch for me.

What I liked…

First of all this is a wonderfully cast film. Every single dude in this movie is awesome and it was great seeing them all work together. Mendelsohn ended up stealing every scene but I’m a huge fan of his ever since I saw him in Animal Kingdom. We get a very small but great dose of the late Gandolfini and Pitt was fun as his smart albeit very cynical gangster. I also thought it was a very well shot film with a CRAZY ASS death scene in the middle of the film utilizing slow-mo and CGI that looked great when usually it looks like a bag of crap. The film, which is mostly a dialogue driven film kept my attention the entire time but I may have to admit it was mostly due to the fact that I loved seeing all these actors on screen with each other.

What I didn’t like…

I don’t know what the message was supposed to be. Capitalism is bad? No seriously, that’s the message. I know this because it was SCREAMED at my face for the entire time. It was not subtle in any way. For a film called Killing Them Softly, there was nothing soft or subtle about the way they got their point across. It was also a highly cynical and dark film which is fine when it fits the character but Brad Pitt’s Jackie just seemed to be preaching from the mouth or Dominik most of the time. It got old. I’ve always been a fan of a slow burn so that aspect didn’t bother me at all. It also ended VERY abruptly without tying anything together. It’s almost like they ran out of money. It just didn’t sit well.

Overall I enjoyed the film and it looked great, especially that scene I mentioned earlier. It’s a short 90 minute film so I’d say take a chance on it. The cast is amazing and the directer is promising.

3/5