8/12/15: Killing is His Business

Tags

2008 Presidential election, Andrew Dominik, based on a book, Ben Mendelsohn, best friends, Brad Pitt, Chopper, cinema, Cogan's Trade, crime as business, crime film, crime thriller, dramas, economic crisis, film reviews, films, financial collapse, George V. Higgens, Greig Fraser, heist films, heroin trafficking, heroin users, hired killers, hitman, illegal gambling, James Gandolfini, Killing Them Softly, literary adaptation, Max Casella, mobsters, Movies, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins, Sam Shepard, Scoot McNairy, set in 2008, Slaine, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, Trevor Long, Vincent Curatola, writer-director

Like most established film genres, mob movies come in a rainbow assortment of various flavors: they can be pedal-to-the-metal thrillers, pensive character studies, dramas, comedies or any combination of the above. They can focus on the acts being committed, the people committing said acts or the authority figures trying to put said people behind bars. Mob movies might turn the gangsters into virtually mythical heroes or they might portray them as violent, bottom-feeding scum. They might be packed to the rafters with clever dialogue and insight or as reserved and serene as an undisturbed lake.

For the follow-up to his under-appreciated Western The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (2007), New Zealand writer-director Andrew Dominik takes aim at another literary adaptation: this time around, he puts his particular spin on George V. Higgens’ 1974 crime novel, Cogan’s Trade. By updating the action from the mid-’70s to the 2008 economic crisis/Presidential election, Dominik gives us yet another view of organized crime: the mob as a business entity. Like the white-collar figure-heads who pull the strings, Dominik gives us a view of organized crime that’s all about the bottom-line, cost-effectiveness, streamlining the organization and keeping the stockholders happy. You know…just like “Big Business” but with a lot more bullets and bloodshed.

The central plot to Killing Them Softly echoes Higgins’ novel fairly closely, albeit with that massive timeline shift from the ’70s to the ’00s. As in the novel, the main action involves ripping off a mob card game and pinning the blame on the schmuck who runs it. Johnny “Squirrel” Amato (Vincent Curatola aka The Sopranos’ Johnny Sacks) hires fresh-from-the-pen Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and his incredibly unreliable former bunk mate/heroin addict, Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), to rip off the aforementioned card game. The plan is actually pretty solid, since they have the perfect patsy: Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), the guy who runs the card game, actually orchestrated his own robbery of said game many years back and was never punished for his “crime.” If the game gets ripped off again, all eyes will be on Markie and, to quote the parlance, he’ll be “fish food.”

Enter Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), the soft-spoken, philosophical hitman who’s been sent by mob enforcer Dillon (Sam Shepard) and his underworld employers to get everything back on track. You see, when Trattman ripped off his game years ago, it put a temporary halt to the illegal card games, which ended up affecting the mob’s bottom line in a pretty major way. Jackie needs to restore order and reassure the “stockholders” that the games will be able to continue unimpeded.

As Jackie continues to meet with Driver (Richard Jenkins), the mob’s consigliori and his go-to man on this particular venture, Frankie, Russell and Johnny Amato try to keep their own heads above water, no easy feat given that Russell’s eagerly returned to the smack addiction that initially landed him in prison. For his part, though, Jackie is only concerned with one thing: getting rid of every person involved with the heist, including poor Markie. It’s nothing personal, though…this is nothing but business.

Reuniting with his Assassination of… star Brad Pitt, Dominik turns in a decent adaptation of Higgins’ novel (which was, itself, sort of a companion piece to his better known debut, The Friends of Eddie Coyle), albeit one which still manages to fall short of the source material. In many ways, Killing Them Softly reminded me of another recent film that managed to disappoint despite its high-octane cast: American Hustle (2013). As with that film, a handful of truly great performances and a generally intelligent script still add up to a slightly underwhelming whole. It’s not that Killing Them Softly is a bad film, mind you: it’s just one that never fully gets to live up to its potential.

Chalk this up to a few different factors. For one, Dominik’s decision to move the action from the ’70s to the ’00s makes perfect sense, on paper, yet is executed in a less than perfect manner. The intention behind this seems to be a parallel between the United States’ economic meltdown in 2008 and the similar economic meltdown experienced by the mob due to the recent heist. In reality, however, none of this pays off until the film’s very final scene: for the most part, this is just an excuse to endlessly reference said economic meltdown, as well as that year’s Presidential campaign. To that end, we get countless George W. Bush soundbites, as well as countless Barack Obama soundbites: it’s hard to recall a scene in the film that doesn’t feature a TV, radio or newspaper constantly talking about the financial crisis. It’s complete overkill and quite equitable to the equally odious tendency of some period pieces to over-rely on the slang and vernacular of whatever era they’re depicting. It becomes so much background noise and, to be frank, adds little to the overall narrative.

Killing Them Softly also has a tendency to relegate its strongest aspect, Brad Pitt’s excellent performance as Cogan, to the back burner in favor of an increased emphasis on the travails of Frankie and Russell. As should be fairly obvious, that’s not exactly the best move: Pitt is a constantly magnetic presence whenever he’s onscreen, whereas the normally reliable McNairy and Mendelsohn turn in performances that tend to grate on the nerves. With McNairy’s “Bahston” accent and Mendelsohn’s Aussie inflection fighting each other for dominance, too much of Killing Them Softly comes across like an acting workshop where the performers have been given scenarios to explore: “You guys are low-level crooks…go!” Add to this McNairy’s wishy-washy characterization and the fact that Mendelsohn just turns in one of his patented “slovenly cretin” roles (the differences between his character here and the one he played in TV’s Bloodline, for example, are so minute as to be negligible) and we’re left with a couple of protagonists who just aren’t particularly interesting.

This reliance on past performances actually affects more of the film than just McNairy and Mendelsohn. In one of his last few roles, James Gandolfini’s take on hard-drinking hitman “New York” Mickey come across like a more exhausted Tony Soprano, while Sopranos co-star Curatola’s Johnny Amato is an almost exact replica of his Johnny Sacks character: the levels of meta are strong with this one. Throw in Liotta doing yet another sad-sack gangster and you have lots of characters who seem overly familiar, even though we’ve just met them.

In truth, all of the films best scenes belong to Pitt and Richard Jenkins: while the rest of the film flops between sober crime thriller and slightly sardonic black comedy, only the interplay between Jackie and Driver manages to find the perfect combination of both. At their best, these scenes remind of the Coen Brothers’ innate grasp on “extraordinary characters doing ordinary things” and the film could certainly have benefited from more of them. It’s little surprise, then, that the highly effective finale belongs solely to Pitt and Jenkins: the two are always the film’s high-water mark, so handing them the keys, at the end, only makes sense.

It’s easy to imagine a slightly different take on this material, one that keeps the updated time-frame but puts the emphasis back on Jackie (the original novel, after all, is called Cogan’s Trade for a reason). There’s plenty of rich material to be mined as far as the parallel between corporate business models and the Mafia goes but Dominik’s script never goes any deeper than the point made in Pitt’s closing speech: America isn’t a country, it’s a business. As a character, Jackie is a pretty great one: he’s charismatic, thoughtful, smart, eloquent, appropriately cold-blooded yet with a firmly established internal compass that always keeps him pointed towards true north.

When Frankie whines to Jackie that Johnny Amato isn’t a “bad guy” and doesn’t deserve what’s coming to him, Jackie’s response is honest, perfectly calibrated and delivered without a hint of sarcasm: “None of ’em are…they’re all nice guys, kid.” Nothing about killing people is personal to Jackie (the title comes from his preference to kill from a distance aka “killing them softly): it’s all just part of his job, no more, no less.

This, of course, is the ultimate message that Dominik is getting at: when you break everything down, it’s all just business. Lots of characters and moments reiterate this talking point, over the course of the film, but no one hammers it home quite as well as Jackie. Pity, then, that Dominik didn’t give him more of the reins: as a whole, the film could have used a lot more of his inherent ability to knock ’em dead, softly or otherwise.

12/30/14 (Part One): Behind the Eight-Ball

Tags

Arthur French, Bridget Barkan, Caleb Landry Jones, Christina Hendricks, cinema, dark comedies, Domenick Lombardozzi, drama, Eddie Marsan, film reviews, films, God's Pocket, John Slattery, John Turturro, Joyce Van Patten, Molly Price, Movies, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, secrets, step-son, working-class neighborhood, workplace accident

You gotta feel for Mickey Scarpato (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the patron-saint of palookas in God’s Pocket, South Philly: he’s just pulled off a heist and been rewarded with a slab of raw beef at the exact time that his shithead, racist step-son, Leon (Caleb Landry Jones), gets himself killed in what may or may not have been a workplace accident. Mickey’s wife, Jeannie (Christina Hendricks) wants her beloved boy to have the best funeral possible but mercenary mortician Smilin’ Jack (Eddie Marsan) only takes cold, hard cash, which is in rather short supply for unlucky Mickey. He could go to his best buddy and fellow con man, Arthur (John Turturro), if only ol’ Arthur wasn’t the guy who stiffed Mickey with the beef in the first place. Arthur’s got plenty of his own debts all around town, however, and is in no mood to pony up for Leon’s coffin, although his cold-blooded aunt, Sophie (Joyce Van Patten), is just the kind of person you want on your side when the break-a-legs come calling. To put a cherry on his shit sundae, local legend/legendary drunk newspaper columnist Richard Shellburn (Richard Jenkins) is sniffing around both Leon’s workplace and his grieving mother…just the kind of trouble that Mickey needs when he’s just trying to get square with everyone. Ah, God’s Pocket…you cruel bastard, you…

There’s a lot going on in actor/first-time director John Slattery’s God’s Pocket (2014), maybe enough for a couple of films, although that seems a little odd considering the relatively short run-time. Nonetheless, Slattery, adapting Peter Dexter’s novel, crams in enough oddball characters, bleakly comic setpieces and shocking bursts of violence to ensure that we’re never bored, even if character motivations often seem as arbitrary as the whimsical hand of fate that so often flips poor Mickey the bird. God’s Pocket also bears the onus of being one of legendary actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performances before his untimely death in February 2014. For this reason, alone, Slattery’s modest little noir-lite would deserve a watch: passing up any Hoffman performance is the dumbest of dumb moves. How does the actual film hold up, however, especially considering Slattery’s usually in front of the camera as Mad Men’s sleazy Roger Sterling, not behind it? Turns out, God’s Pocket isn’t perfect, by any means, but it’s just quirky enough to work, anchored by another massively impressive performance by Hoffman as a sad sack loser who just can’t quit losing, even as victory dangles so mercilessly close.

Slattery’s debut is a an actors showcase, above anything else, and there’s almost a laundry-list of great performers turning in some spirited performances. Turturro can (and does) do this kind of likable loser stuff in his sleep but there’s something particularly interesting about his Arthur, a thoroughly worthless mook who still manages to be the most loyal guy on the block, even as he repeatedly screws over Mickey. Marsan has rarely been as slimy as he is here: Smilin’ Jack has to be one of the nastiest, crassest individuals on Earth but it’s also impossible to tear your eyes off him. Caleb Landry Jones, so interesting in Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral (2012), really tears into the character of Leon: there’s nothing sympathetic or likable in his performance whatsoever…Leon is complete slime, from beginning to end, and Jones looks like he’s having a blast.

If I had any real issue with any of the performances, it would have to be with Hendricks and Jenkins. Although they both turn in some solid work here, I found them to be more than a little stagey, especially once Hendricks really lets loose in the film’s final third. I also admit that the subplot involving their relationship made no sense and served as a constant source of confusion for me: minus that inexplicable bit, I might have liked the individual performances a bit more but it always felt a bit off to me. I’ve enjoyed Hendricks in the few roles I’ve seen her in outside of Mad Men and wish that her Mad Men co-star had found a little more for her to do. To be honest, it would have been kind of cool to see Hendricks tear into the Sophie role, as it would have given her the opportunity to be more than dour and upset.

And then, of course, there’s Philip Seymour Hoffman. A tremendously varied actor, Hoffman was never relegated to just one type of performance or character: he could play everything from a nerd to a blue-collar Joe, from a saint to a sinner, and bring the same sense of lived-in verisimilitude to any and all of them. Here, he plays Mickey with a kind of roiling, seething frustration, a wide-eyed, lunkheaded refusal to accept that life is really this bad and that he really is that screwed. There are moments here, such as when Mickey finally kicks the shit out of Smilin’ Jack or the jaw-dropping meat truck crash, that easily rank with Hoffman’s best work. At his best, Hoffman was an effortless mimic and there’s nothing about his portrayal of Mickey Scarpato that feels inauthentic in the slightest. This is a perfect example of a gifted actor bringing his A-game to a smaller production, treating the proceedings like this was the only game in town.

It’s a shame that Slattery’s debut will probably be over-shadowed by Hoffman’s death, since it’s a really well-made film that deserves to be taken in on its own merits. From a production standpoint, Slattery hits all of the familiar notes but manages to imbue everything with an underlying sense of humor that really helps the grim proceedings. The script is tight and the film looks and sounds good: nothing here reinvents the wheel but it’s a pretty slick ride, nonetheless. Since this is one of Hoffman’s final performances, however, everything achieves a sort of shimmering mythology, almost as if the film is pulled from its modest perch to attain a slightly higher elevation than it might actually need. As a film, God’s Pocket is a modest, highly entertaining and exquisitely acted little character drama that throws a lot of elements at the wall, many of which stick. As a Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle, however, it’s yet one more example of he’ll be so sorely missed.