Michael Ledo Johnny Amato (Vincent Curatola) runs a dry cleaning business and is a low level crime entrepreneur. He hires two guys to rob a poker game filled with organized criminals. Frankie (Scoot McNairy) is the lead robber, a man who is a Steve Buscemi type. He has help from an unkempt Australian junkie friend named Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), who walks pets for a living. He hopes to be a drug dealer to change his life.The reason why they believe they can get away with the job is because Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta) had done this job once before. He will surely be blamed. After the job is pulled, hitman Jackie (Brad Pitt) is brought in to sort things out and make things right. Jackie is thoughtful, soft spoken, and cynical. Since he knows Johnny, he hires Mickey (James Gandolfini) to do the job, a man who has multiple issues.There are a number of things which set this film apart from other crime movies. First is the dialouge. It is clear the people are uneducated, except for Jackie who speaks as if he lives in two worlds. The ignorance of the robbers is brought to light when they wear bright yellow cleaning gloves to perform their task.The second aspect is the background sound on both the radio, TV, and jukeboxes. It is the macrocosm of what is happening on the screen, and sometimes in an ironic fashion. The time period is the 2008 election season during the financial collapse. We hear "restore confidence in the financial system" and "it's all too familiar" on the radio when Markie is about to take the fall. Every time "B" actor Ray Liotta got punched or kicked, I would think, This is for "Entitled" or This is for "Ticket Out." Here is one for "The Son of No One."The symbolism of the background announcements is brought to light at the end, in case you failed to catch it in the opening scene. A smart film for people who enjoy crime dramas.Parental Guide: F-bombs, no sex, no nudity. Blood splatter, killing, beatings.

Pjtaylor-96-138044 Excellent writing and performances perforate this oddly structured and slowly paced piece, one which doesn't introduce its anti-hero protagonist for quite some time and, as such, fails to establish a proper connection with him in the way that's necessary for the total destruction of every other developed link to this world to work. When 'Killing Them Softly (2012)' works, it really works and there's a frankness about the picture that allows even the most mundane of scenes to almost instantly draw you in. It's just the lack of discipline - or perhaps a sheer determination to shove in tons of not-so-subtle Obama-election-era American commentary - that often makes the overall experience a disjointed and somewhat dysfunctional one. 6/10

Nils Urban The biggest gripe I have with this movie is that it feels like emptiness has been blown up with more emptiness. Don't make the mistake I made and watch it till the end because your patience won't be rewarded.What you will get a lot is: people sitting in cars making meaningless, boring and unrelated (to the plot of the movie) conversation most of the time. All the transition scenes filled with political talk (for the most part from Bush) doesn't add anything to the movie either. what an amazing failure. the only thing this movie has to offer are some great slow motion scenes of people being beat up or shot and great acting that is blown away by irrelevance.I can not follow the arguments being made in favor of this movie: - that it is comparable to an old classic. (it is not. that would be an insult to those classics!) - that it has Tarantino style dialogues. (absolutely not! it is lenghty like Tarantino but that's all it is, whilst Tarantino delivers) - that it is gritty or dark. (nope...)very disappointing movie but great acting.

locytge After the rarefied Assassination, with its rich period detail and earthy palette, Killing Them Softly seems rather Grey and even ordinary. It bypasses the last 20 years of post- Tarantino gangster movies to recall David Mamet's 1975 play American Buffalo, itself a meditation on recession-era crime and punishment. The Mamet-like dialogue is the most telling example of what's not quite right. Dominik has a cast of excellent American actors here, but most seem to be in service to a script that isn't quite as sharp and perceptive as it thinks it is. Music (and sound itself) is a secondary problem. Throughout the film, TV sets blast out bulletins from rolling news channels, providing a crude running commentary on the larger world. The music choices (The Velvet Underground's Heroin for a narcotic state) are equally clunky.Surprisingly, then, Killing Them Softly does, just about, work. Key to this is yet another superb turn from Pitt, playing another of his indignant outsider antiheroes: movie-star cool, noir-thriller weary and yet driven by something recognizable and psychologically real. It's Pitt who sells this movie as he navigates the mess he's been brought into, a world where gangsters rob their own illegal card games just for a laugh, and where hired hit men, once the samurai-like loners of bygone days, have become flabby, broken-down, unreliable losers.