KILLING THEM SOFTLY (2012) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Andrew Dominik
Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn,
James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta
When a couple of lowlife robbers knock over a high-stakes poker game, an enforcer played by Brad Pitt shows up to straighten things out. This movie goes a long way on wise-guy dialogue and style. The storytelling is secondary. So James Gandolfini gets a couple of nice, juicy scenes as an out-of-town hit man, but then his character doesn't do anything, and then he drops out of the picture completely, offscreen. And there's an extended time out from the narrative while one of the robbers shoots heroin and Dominik shows you what that looks like, both from the point of view of his partner watching him, and from behind the junkie's eyeballs. Ray Liotta plays the guy who runs the poker game. It seems he knocked over his own operation once before, so when it happens again, his life isn't worth very much. Pitt recommends just killing him, but he's overruled and a couple of thugs catch up with Ray Liotta and beat the shit out of him. It's ugly and sickening to watch, and ultimately pointless, since (as Pitt points out) Ray Liotta has to die anyway. Talk about bad luck.
James Gandolfini
(1961-2013)
