I would say that I’ve never been a fan of mobster movies, and after seeing Killing Them Softly with Brad Pitt, I would sat that nothing has changed, except for the fact that I may continue to skip more mobster movies.
The plot here is that Johnny Amato has two men rob a card game on the basis that Markie Trattman will get blamed for it because he said after a heavy night of drinking that he planned a hit on a card game several years ago. The dark comedy here is supposed to reflect that the local criminal economy would collapse if the card game is hit again.
Brad Pitt plays Jackie Coogan, a mob enforcer who comes in to clean things up. You’ll see him in several meetings with his driver, deciding what to do. During one of the meetings, he has heard who knocked over the card game before.
Brad wants to hire another enforcer to kill one of the other men because Pitt says he knows that man. So he hires Mickey, who is a broken-down mobster not capable of pulling the trigger anymore.
Not much you can say about this movie. Maybe the only thing that surprised me was that Ray Liotta was in this movie. It was not a part he would play since he has a long history of being a heel that is indestructible. I can still remember his scary performance as a psycho boyfriend in Something Wild with Melanie Griffin.
Maybe the other surprise is James Gandolfini’s performance as the broken down mobster. Have to wonder if Liotta and Gandolfini are not getting enough opportunities to portray better characters.
Other than that, I can’t go above two stars on this one.
Rick Holman
The plot here is that Johnny Amato has two men rob a card game on the basis that Markie Trattman will get blamed for it because he said after a heavy night of drinking that he planned a hit on a card game several years ago. The dark comedy here is supposed to reflect that the local criminal economy would collapse if the card game is hit again.
Brad Pitt plays Jackie Coogan, a mob enforcer who comes in to clean things up. You’ll see him in several meetings with his driver, deciding what to do. During one of the meetings, he has heard who knocked over the card game before.
Brad wants to hire another enforcer to kill one of the other men because Pitt says he knows that man. So he hires Mickey, who is a broken-down mobster not capable of pulling the trigger anymore.
Not much you can say about this movie. Maybe the only thing that surprised me was that Ray Liotta was in this movie. It was not a part he would play since he has a long history of being a heel that is indestructible. I can still remember his scary performance as a psycho boyfriend in Something Wild with Melanie Griffin.
Maybe the other surprise is James Gandolfini’s performance as the broken down mobster. Have to wonder if Liotta and Gandolfini are not getting enough opportunities to portray better characters.
Other than that, I can’t go above two stars on this one.
Rick Holman