In Killing Them Softly, a low-level gangster gets two hapless losers to hold up a poker game that is protected by the mob. The mob, of course, brings in an enforcer to put things right. Perhaps Killing Them Softly would have been a great gangster movie in the 60s, before Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and David Chase raised the bar. It was a big hit at Cannes, but that crowd may not be used to watching The Sopranos.
We know what is going to happen in the plot. Fortunately, we have some excellent actors, led by Brad Pitt in a character role as the ruthless and nihilistic mob enforcer. Pitt’s enforcer brings in a trusted colleague, a hit man from New York (James Gandolfini) to help him out – but the hit man is emotionally damaged from a betrayed romance and can only focus on drinking and whoring. Richard Jenkins plays an unusually squeamish mid-level manager in the mob. Scoot McNairy (one of the “house guests” in Argo) and Ben Mendelsohn (the most psychopathic criminal in Animal Kingdom) are especially good as the doomed hold-up men.
As good as the cast is, there’s just not much here. An attempt to intertwine a thread about the 2008 economic collapse and Presidential election is a misguided device that only serves as a distraction.