Killing Them Softly

So let’s get this out the way from the off: in my opinion, Killing Them Softly (dir. Andrew Dominik) is the greatest gangster movie since Goodfellas came out way back in 1990. It's exciting, clever, funny, and very, very cool. Yes, again, I’m biased. I love Andrew Dominik’s previous work – however little of it there may be. Both completely different, yet both fully-formed and masterpieces in their own rights, Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford are among the best films of the last twenty years.

And so is Killing Them Softly. However, whilst the film has been by no means receiving bad reviews, it hasn’t been garnering the sort of praise that one (I) might have thought. Why? Well, there seem to be two main criticisms levelled against it.

1. We’ve seen this all before. Have we? Well, let’s think about this. Some reviews have suggested that Dominik is being perhaps a little too faithful to his sources in putting Killing Them Softly together. He certainly doesn’t help himself by having a few alumni from The Sopranos knocking around.

I expected this from Gandolfini but not you, Johnny... (don’t tell Gandolfini I said that). So here’s the deal: Dominik has shot the film brilliantly, edited it stylishly, and got a few actors who have been in gangster-related things before. Does that make it derivative? No. No, it doesn’t. This isn’t a Guy Ritchie film. This isn’t like a Guy Ritchie film; it is much, much more than that. Indeed, the fact that we might recognise a face or two might even serve a purpose: Dominik’s film is an endgame. The first time we see Gandolfini, he’s trudging his way wearily, blearily, and drunkenly through an airport. We’ve all seen The Sopranos. We’ve all seen Tony Soprano get what he wants. But this isn’t that show. Gandolfini, here, is a lonely drunk, constantly remembering better times and better women. Dominik’s film is The End for those gangsters. This is what happens when you live that life for too long. You get miserable, you get poor, you get ‘got’. There aren’t many films which (whilst still remaining exuberant, hilarious, and exciting) show us quite this far down the slope.

2. It has been suggested that Killing Them Softly is a little too ‘on the nose’, that it is a little less than subtle in its political commentary and its overall examination of the economic crisis.

Any criticism of the film for ‘bigness’ seems to me to be somewhat missing the point. It’s meant to be ‘big’, it’s meant to be brash. It’s part of the film’s confidence that it paints itself in such bright colours. There aren’t enough films with the arrogance to consider themselves so important. Yes, Dominik uses The Velvet Underground’s ‘Heroin’ in a scene in which two characters take heroin. No, that’s not a problem. It’s indicative of the film's construction of itself as an all-encompassing monster. The film may well be playing out the international financial crisis in the microcosm of organised crime, but it is still about the international financial crisis. If it was put together in any ‘smaller’ a way then it would lose its significance. To me, there just aren’t enough filmmakers with the swagger to call a film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, or use ‘The Man Comes Around’ when introducing its main character. To me, we need a few more filmmakers like Andrew Dominik in this world.

The Return of the Blog

Hi y’all, sorry for not being around for the past couple of months. I’ve just finished university and have been sorting m’self out for the real world. I’m not quite there yet but fingers crossed I’ll be able to call myself a 100% person soon enough.

But enough about me, this is a film blog, a FILM blog, A film blog. So let’s talk film: as anyone who’s worth their cinematic salt can tell you (and if you’re not, you’re probably reading the wrong blog), the most exciting thing that’s going on in film at the moment is that Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is going to be just as good as There Will be Blood. For those of us who consider that film our generation’s Citizen Kane, this is very good news indeed. Let’s hope PTA doesn’t lose it and start doing voiceovers for children’s cartoons anytime soon.

Or maybe that’d be interesting. Who knows?

But in my time away another thing has caught my eye – something which has been bothering me for a little while. Ladies and gentlemen, Exhibit A:

No, I don’t want to talk about the resurgence of 80s action movie “stars” – there’ve probably been enough jokes made about how Sly Stallone looks old. He’s old. He’s an old man. Yes. It’s true.

No, what interests me more – and indeed, worries me more – than the sight of a bunch of old, right-wing gents ‘doin it one more time’, is the current trend of the West’s assimilation of Asian cinema. The director of The Last Stand, Kim Ji-Woon, is the director of two of the most exciting and adventurous films made in the last 20 years – A Tale of Two Sisters and I Saw the Devil. The latter film might initially lead one to suspect that Kim would be perfect for Schwarzenegger’s big screen return – it features its own share of bone crunching action and a body count to match The Terminator. But it is, ultimately, an anti-violence film. It’s cleverness lies in the fact that the audience is drawn into believing that the revenge drama is what is driving the film forward. It is only in the film’s last seconds that it is revealed that all the violence and thrills and spills (admittedly thrilling as they are) have been the protagonist’s way of deflecting his own grief; a way of him not actually coming to terms with his loss. I Saw the Devil, then, is ultimately meta-cinema of the best kind; it presumes the audience’s knowledge of a genre and applies generic convention to something approaching real life – if you really did lose a loved one, would the first thing you’d actually think to do be to engage a convoluted, yet precise and brutal course of revenge? Of course it is unfair to judge The Last Stand before I have seen it, but something tells me Kim’s westernisation may have lost him some of that subtlety.

A number of Kim’s contemporaries have also made the move West and are soon to come out with their own English-language debuts. Whilst neither Bong Joon-Ho or Park Chan-Wook look to be following Kim quite so far into Western schlock, I only hope that they maintain some semblance of their roots. Eurgh. This is a moot post. I’ll go and see a movie and review it. Have you seen This Must be the Place yet?