Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

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Jeff
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Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#1 Post by Jeff » Mon May 14, 2012 10:14 am

It hurts not to call this Cogan's Trade.

Here is the first clip.

stroszeck
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#2 Post by stroszeck » Mon May 14, 2012 11:31 am

Looks good and I thought The Assassination of Jesse James was a way underrated masterpiece but that clip seems...random.

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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#3 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon May 14, 2012 1:39 pm

Oh great, I have to try and separate the follow-up film from the director of possibly the best post-Unforgiven Western from that stupid Heather Graham/Joseph Fiennes vehicle now?

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Cold Bishop
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#4 Post by Cold Bishop » Mon May 14, 2012 5:58 pm

And Cogan's Trade was such an awesome title. That sounded like it could been a 70s action classic with Lee Marvin or James Coburn. This is the sort of title you'd expect from a DTV film starring Dolph Lundgren and Ja Rule.

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colinr0380
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#5 Post by colinr0380 » Tue May 15, 2012 4:37 am

Although I would probably end up getting "Cogan's Trade" mixed up with "Coogan's Bluff"!

flyonthewall, some of us are still getting over the problems reconciling that the director of the wonderful Farewell, My Concubine made Killing Me Softly!

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Jeff
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#6 Post by Jeff » Thu May 17, 2012 9:57 pm

Short piece with Dominik at USA Today.
Dominik did explain that the movie's name change, from Cogan's Trade, was to help out Pitt. The movie always going to be Killing Them Softly he insists, which is how Pitt's character describes his low-key killing method.

But Dominik, who directed Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, says he didn't want that key "softly" line to have too much emphasis in the dialogue.

"There's a danger that the actor might make a meal out of the line," says Dominik.

So for a long time the movie was referred to as Cogan's Trade.

"Brad's character calls what he does 'killing them softly' --- with a minimum of fuss," says Dominik. "It sounded like a movie title to me. Cogan's Trade kind of sounds like a Clint Eastwood title to me from 1972."
You can see the clip of Pitt talking about "killing them softly" at 18:13 here.

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Cold Bishop
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#7 Post by Cold Bishop » Fri May 18, 2012 4:20 am

Cogan's Trade kind of sounds like a Clint Eastwood title to me from 1972.
Which is why it's perfect! C'mon, Domink... after Wettest County, you're not fooling me this wasn't a Weinstein move.

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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#8 Post by Cde. » Fri May 18, 2012 7:40 am

New Orleans press referred to the film as Killing Them Softly while it was shooting.

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Finch
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Re: Cannes 2012

#9 Post by Finch » Tue May 22, 2012 7:47 am

Word on Killing Them Softly seems to be very positive for the most part:
PB .. outstandingly watchable, superbly and casually pessimistic, a world of slot-mouthed professional and semi-professional criminals always complaining about cleaning up the mess made by other screwups. The movie delivers the classic mob "betrayal" trope: someone shoots someone else, at close range, suddenly and terrifyingly, having lulled his victim – and us – into a false sense of security with a long pointless conversation about what they were going to do later.
and some tweets

@zlobuster Killing Them Softly = boring them deadly.

‏@daveyjenkins A kind of nasty pulp/noir NASHVILLE. Fun, though politically like being preached at through a bullhorn.

@robbiereviews KILLING THEM SOFTLY is a scorcher: real American crime cinema. Tough, violent and nihilistically funny. Loved it. #cannes

@firstshowing Dominik's Killing Them Softly - Brutal as f-k! But also lacking a bit. Felt way too short, oddly. Typical hit-and-kill kind of crime flick.

‏@erickohn KILLING THEM SOFTLY would make a great double bill with THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, both period pieces about recession-era 2008. #cannes

@charlesgant Killing Them Softly's "crisis in the economy" not-so-sub text: messaging you can enjoy and then feel smart for finding it too crude. Clever!

‏@yo_damo Liked but didn't quite love Killing Them Softly; some very good hardboiled set-pieces and Brad Pitt is excellent

@GuyLodge KILLING THEM SOFTLY (B-) Blinding dirty-70s homage taken to stylistically suspended present, all to add stunningly banal Obama surtext? Why?

@XanBrooks Cannes screening: Killing Them Softly. supple, punchy hit-man noir from the front-line of recession America. Ray Liotta goes through hell

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Jeff
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#10 Post by Jeff » Tue May 22, 2012 8:17 am

Overall really solid reviews for this. Would have not guessed it was set during the 2008 election season and against the backdrop of the recession. Apparently the story has really been worked over by Dominik, with a strong anti-capitalism/anti-America message, and Obama taking as much heat as anyone.

Here are the only full reviews I've come across so far, and they're all quite positive.
Peter Bradshaw, [i]The Guardian[/i] wrote:Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly is a slick ensemble-nightmare of middle-management mobster brutality and incompetence in the tradition of Goodfellas and Casino, Pulp Fiction and TV's The Sopranos...It is outstandingly watchable, superbly and casually pessimistic, a world of slot-mouthed professional and semi-professional criminals always complaining about cleaning up the mess made by other screwups.
Todd McCarthy, [i]The Hollywood Reporter[/i] wrote:A juicy, bloody, grimy and profane crime drama that amply satisfies as a deep-dish genre piece, Killing Them Softly rather insistently also wants to be something more.
Kevin Jagernauth, [i]The Playlist[/i] wrote:Easily a contender for one of the best movies of the year, "Killing Them Softly" pulses and burns in a way few films ever do. [A]
Eric Kohn, [i]IndieWire[/i] wrote:Dominik brings a sleek pulp sensibility to the material and melds its topicality to a strange form of scathingly anti-capitalist entertainment.
Dave Calhoun, [i]Time Out[/i] wrote:Massively pleasurable and just smart enough.
Several tweeters seem to think the capitalism stuff could be more subtle:
Ben Kenigsberg wrote:Clips of the financial crisis don't add insta-gravitas to a pseudo-edgy wiseguy drama, know what I'm sayin?
Guy Lodge wrote:Blinding dirty-70s homage taken to stylistically suspended present, all to add stunningly banal Obama surtext? Why?
Sasha Stone wrote:And Dominick isn't fucking around - this is no subtle metaphor. This is the grapefruit in the face.
Nick James wrote:It's a little bit heavy on the political metaphor however
Mike D'Angelo wrote:Subtext, Andrew. *Sub*text. Sub.

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Re: Cannes 2012

#11 Post by puxzkkx » Tue May 22, 2012 8:55 am

James Gandolfini seems to be getting the lions' share of attention out of the cast - some calling it his Oscar role and a potential Best Actor spoiler here at the fest à la Christoph Waltz.

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Jeff
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#12 Post by Jeff » Tue May 22, 2012 9:19 am



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mfunk9786
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#14 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Oct 01, 2012 3:55 pm

Posters are out and they're incredible:

Image

Image

Image

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Graham
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#15 Post by Graham » Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:56 pm

I saw this a couple of weeks back (it's already been released in the UK) and enjoyed it. It's not in the same league as The Assassination Of Jesse James, but contains some splendid dialogue. Some of the rock songs used are heavy handed (I cannot reveal more for spoiler reasons) as is the constant presence of TV coverage of the 2008 election race. Still, it's a solid, pulpy film that comes right out of the heart of darkness that permeated 1970s US cinema.

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Jeff
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#16 Post by Jeff » Tue Oct 30, 2012 8:17 pm

Another great poster

Image

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wigwam
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#17 Post by wigwam » Sun Dec 02, 2012 5:14 am

Worthless movie. Boondock Saints of Southern Wild starring Tyler Durden. Only worse.

And while I found Jesse James equally terrible, at least it created tension with the Casey Affleck miscasting making me wonder when he'd skateboard away from the train robbery. This is just Henry Hill's accountant rewriting GoodFellas.

AVOID!

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krnash
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#18 Post by krnash » Sun Dec 02, 2012 5:26 am

wigwam wrote:Worthless movie. Boondock Saints of Southern Wild starring Tyler Durden. Only worse.

And while I found Jesse James equally terrible, at least it created tension with the Casey Affleck miscasting making me wonder when he'd skateboard away from the train robbery. This is just Henry Hill's accountant rewriting GoodFellas.

AVOID!
Phew. I was disappointed when I began to read your post until I read your opinion on 'Jesse James'.

Can't wait to see the film.

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domino harvey
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#19 Post by domino harvey » Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:18 am

I don't think ...Jesse James... is anywhere near as good as people here have made it out to be, but dissing Casey Affleck's perf is straight-up madness

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warren oates
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#20 Post by warren oates » Sun Dec 02, 2012 2:19 pm

I'll have to disagree with wigwam and domino. For me Andrew Dominik's Jesse James is the first authentic American Western since The Outlaw Josey Wales and oh so much more. For starters: A masterpiece of completely unique and inspired visual and genre mashery. A Victorian Western that feels like it was scripted by Peckinpah and directed by Sokurov.

So I came into Killing Them Softly with high expectations as a huge fan of Dominik's directorial talent and a fan of novelist George V. Higgins' work. Killing Them Softly did not disappoint. The film isn't a masterpiece because the material isn't all that ambitious to begin with. Higgins' books are about the travails of low level hoods and even a work like The Friends of Eddie Coyle only manages to reach tragic heights near the end and almost by accident.

Dominik starts the film off with aggressively avant garde titles -- that would be at home in a Godard picture -- as they interrupt the smooth flow of a slow-motion steadicam shot. The sound design is even more aggressive and odd from the start, so much so that I thought the sound system might be broken at first. Hearing this film in anything less than 5.1 won't accurately reflect the full range, spread and creativity of the sound mix. A number of scenes actually depend on the sound more than the image for their impact. There's a savage beating early on that would almost seem routine for this kind of picture if you watched it silently, but that sickens and disturbs with the highly specific sound of each blow landing and being felt.

The bulk of the scenes, as in any George V. Higgins work, are two person dialogue exchanges that Dominik does his best to animate. But there are other key moments of high visual and aural interest: A couple of beautifully staged killings and one scene of dreamy drug use. Though the music is a mixed bag: two needle-drop choices seem a bit on-the-nose to me; one even flagrantly Lynchian.

Dominik proves once again to have a great eye for casting and gets excellent performances all around from actors we've seen before and some we haven't. Stand outs for me include cameos by Sam Shepard and Max Casella and supporting turns by Richard Jenkins and James Gandolfini, the latter almost playing a "what if" version of Tony Soprano ten years older and burnt out on the gangster game.

Killing Them Softly is a minor work, but it's still so much more interesting than it would have been in just about anyone else's hands. You get the sense that Dominik could crank out a film this great once a year if he wanted, instead of banging his head against the wall trying to get something like Cities Of The Plain going for years. And maybe that's what he should be doing. Or perhaps he should take a cue from the Errol Morris and David Lynch playbooks and just direct a ton of TV commericals and use the money to shoot his own weird stuff on the side. Indeed, at times Dominik seems to be straining against the normalcy of the script, almost willfully urging himself into stranger moments of Lynchian darkness like the best bits in Chopper. I hope he'll permit himself to go fully into those places in a whole feature film someday.

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wigwam
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#21 Post by wigwam » Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:00 pm

warren oates wrote:Dominik starts the film off with aggressively avant garde titles -- that would be at home in a Godard picture -- as they interrupt the smooth flow of a slow-motion steadicam shot. The sound design is even more aggressive and odd from the start, so much so that I thought the sound system might be broken at first.
LOOOOOOOOVED that part, deserves a much better film to follow it

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warren oates
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#22 Post by warren oates » Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:09 pm

wigwam wrote:
warren oates wrote:Dominik starts the film off with aggressively avant garde titles -- that would be at home in a Godard picture -- as they interrupt the smooth flow of a slow-motion steadicam shot. The sound design is even more aggressive and odd from the start, so much so that I thought the sound system might be broken at first.
LOOOOOOOOVED that part, deserves a much better film to follow it
From what little you've written thus far it does feel a bit like your problem with this film is almost more about the novel and the script on which it's based than anything that follows after those two initial and admittedly important choices. Because it's hard for me to see how a much better film could have been made from the same material by anyone else or what major problems you have specifically with the direction.

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wigwam
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#23 Post by wigwam » Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:25 pm

warren oates wrote:From what little you've written thus far it does feel a bit like your problem with this film is almost more about the novel and the script on which it's based than anything that follows after those two initial and admittedly important choices. Because it's hard for me to see how a much better film could have been made from the same material by anyone else or what major problems you have specifically with the direction.
that makes sense, but I don't know the novel (didn't realize it was based on one; love Eddie Coyle and the like-minded Nickel Ride)

my problem w/ the direction is that it was primarily concerned w/ these juvenile sensibilities of "cool" (let's film Brad blowing smoke in profile 19 more times!) and the dialogue scenes were wasted time w/ the characters trying to out-macho each other and the action scenes were slow and trite. Yes it's a complete bore of a story and an obvious, done-to-death depiction of capitalism as pathology, but both of things can at least be watchable if there's more originality like the credits and less mundanity - however thematic - in all the other scenes.

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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#24 Post by sighkingu » Sun Dec 02, 2012 5:16 pm

I, too, really dug the audio on this film. There were also scenes, some shots and bits of dialogue that I really enjoyed but overall it cannot be considered a success. Thankfully it was not as long as The Assassination of Jesse James. Dominik has talent to spare but he desperately needs an editor or producer to keep him focused at all times.

One other minor beef I had with this film and with Zemeckis' Flight is that both films used the least original of tracks in scenes depicting characters shooting up heroin. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge," in Flight and the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" here. In my opinion, really poor track selection that distracted me from the scenes and remind that I was watching a Hollywood production.

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Jeff
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Re: Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

#25 Post by Jeff » Sun Dec 02, 2012 6:00 pm

I'm with Oates for the most part. Dominik's got style to spare. I loved the opening title sequence and the look of just about everything. There are some great dialog exchanges. I really liked the ones between Pitt and Richard Jenkins' middle-management functionary in particular. I also liked the way Dominik subverted a lot of the traditional mobster chic by populating the cast, in part, with characters that are dumb, smelly junkies, drunks, and losers. It looked like they might be aiming for more traditional genre tropes when they decided that a job called for flying in a high-priced New York hitman.
SpoilerShow
I loved that Gandolfini's expert marksman had turned into a fat, drunk, whoremonger who had rendered himself virtually useless and was disposed of quietly off screen.
It's a minor film for sure, but always engaging and filled with the kind of small, quiet, character moments found in 70s crime films. My only real problem with the film was how the political message was tacked on. I'm sure Dominik and I largely see eye to eye on economic and political matters, but he delivered his points with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I liked the closing lines, but they would have had as much or more impact with out all the clumsy radio and TV dialog sprinkled throughout the film. I thought I'd heard the end of people shrieking "unprincipled American capitalism!" with only vague notions of who they were shrieking at or what exactly they were shrieking about when Nothing got the boot.

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