ftyl
Joined May 2005
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Australian director Andrew Dominik made a blistering debut with Chopper in 2000 before the suitably epic and problematic pause before his second feature, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford hit in 2007 – one of my favourite films of the last 10 years.
Never one to rush to his next project, Dominik is back with Killing Them Softly. Again based on existing material, in this case the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade by the late crime author George V. Higgins, it also sees the director once more penning the script and re-teaming with Jesse James lead Brad Pitt.
The script updates the action from the 70s of the novel to run concurrently with the final days of Obama's race for the presidency. His speeches of hope and the potential of the United States are intermingled with a base and grimy tale of two inveterate idiots who devise what they think is an elaborate plan to steal from the mob and frame someone else for the job.
It's this act, and the almost unbearably tense robbery scene, which sets up the rest of the film – forcing Brad Pitt's Jackie to go after those responsible.
Killing Them Softly is a film about death, the necessity of it at the darker edges of the world but also the way in which it can be seen as a mercy. When Jackie is told to rough up a potential culprit, he protests – if they're going to kill him anyway, why put him through the misery of a beating beforehand?
The title itself refers to the hit-man's philosophy on killing – a preference for taking his victims by surprise, sparing them the fear and anguish of facing their mortality.
It's this oblique attitude which sets Killing Them Softly apart from the identikit crime dramas which trickle through cinemas on a yearly basis. There's a humanity here, despite the criminal deeds at hand. Dominik also works hard to pepper the script with humour – some coarse but all adding up to the portrayal of these characters as more than mere engines for exposition and expiration.
Some of the best scenes in the film revolve around Pitt's all too frequent visits to his mob handler, played by Richard Jenkins. As the economic downturn hits, each and every expenditure has to be checked with the committee in charge. Decisions are caught behind walls of bureaucracy, to the embarrassment of Jenkins and frustration of Pitt.
This is Pitt's film through and through, from his superstar entrance accompanied by Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around to the intensity of the finale. Jackie is a somewhat familiar man out of step with his time, disenchanted with the excess and stupidity of the people he has to work with. It's frequently a quiet performance but commanding, projecting the controlled power of the character without ever slipping into cliché.
The small cast is mostly peopled by character actors – Ray Liotta gets more to play with here than he has in years and Sam Shepard barely gets a look in. Jenkins is a delight while James Gandolfini provides some crime family credibility.Next to Pitt, it's the duo of Scott McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn who you'll spend the most time with and they do a great job of toeing the line between being likeably dense yet still expendable. Mendelsohn goes for broke as a grimy antipodean addict and McNairy has the harder role as a character you almost hope will make it.
Dominik forgoes the luminous Oscar nominated photography of Jesse James here in favour of dark and gritty lensing courtesy of Greig Fraser. The deeps blacks and rain wash the film into almost monochrome shades, highlighting the potential glint of a weapon in the darkness. The director also throws a couple of set pieces into the mix, including one heavily trailed hit that is rendered with all the slow motion style of a much bigger film and a visual highlight of the experience.
But Killing Them Softly is not about murder, it's about the miserable fate of the underclass and the cycle of behaviour which keeps them there. It's contrasted again and again (perhaps too heavily) with the hopeful message of Obama amid the collapse of the global economy as the mob, an organisation where money was never an issue, penny pinch in their dealings with life and death.
Andrew Dominik has crafted another classic with Killing Them Softly. More accessible than Jesse James and powered by a commanding performance from Pitt, it mixes dense, dark visuals with a curt humanism that sets it apart from others in the genre.
Never one to rush to his next project, Dominik is back with Killing Them Softly. Again based on existing material, in this case the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade by the late crime author George V. Higgins, it also sees the director once more penning the script and re-teaming with Jesse James lead Brad Pitt.
The script updates the action from the 70s of the novel to run concurrently with the final days of Obama's race for the presidency. His speeches of hope and the potential of the United States are intermingled with a base and grimy tale of two inveterate idiots who devise what they think is an elaborate plan to steal from the mob and frame someone else for the job.
It's this act, and the almost unbearably tense robbery scene, which sets up the rest of the film – forcing Brad Pitt's Jackie to go after those responsible.
Killing Them Softly is a film about death, the necessity of it at the darker edges of the world but also the way in which it can be seen as a mercy. When Jackie is told to rough up a potential culprit, he protests – if they're going to kill him anyway, why put him through the misery of a beating beforehand?
The title itself refers to the hit-man's philosophy on killing – a preference for taking his victims by surprise, sparing them the fear and anguish of facing their mortality.
It's this oblique attitude which sets Killing Them Softly apart from the identikit crime dramas which trickle through cinemas on a yearly basis. There's a humanity here, despite the criminal deeds at hand. Dominik also works hard to pepper the script with humour – some coarse but all adding up to the portrayal of these characters as more than mere engines for exposition and expiration.
Some of the best scenes in the film revolve around Pitt's all too frequent visits to his mob handler, played by Richard Jenkins. As the economic downturn hits, each and every expenditure has to be checked with the committee in charge. Decisions are caught behind walls of bureaucracy, to the embarrassment of Jenkins and frustration of Pitt.
This is Pitt's film through and through, from his superstar entrance accompanied by Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around to the intensity of the finale. Jackie is a somewhat familiar man out of step with his time, disenchanted with the excess and stupidity of the people he has to work with. It's frequently a quiet performance but commanding, projecting the controlled power of the character without ever slipping into cliché.
The small cast is mostly peopled by character actors – Ray Liotta gets more to play with here than he has in years and Sam Shepard barely gets a look in. Jenkins is a delight while James Gandolfini provides some crime family credibility.Next to Pitt, it's the duo of Scott McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn who you'll spend the most time with and they do a great job of toeing the line between being likeably dense yet still expendable. Mendelsohn goes for broke as a grimy antipodean addict and McNairy has the harder role as a character you almost hope will make it.
Dominik forgoes the luminous Oscar nominated photography of Jesse James here in favour of dark and gritty lensing courtesy of Greig Fraser. The deeps blacks and rain wash the film into almost monochrome shades, highlighting the potential glint of a weapon in the darkness. The director also throws a couple of set pieces into the mix, including one heavily trailed hit that is rendered with all the slow motion style of a much bigger film and a visual highlight of the experience.
But Killing Them Softly is not about murder, it's about the miserable fate of the underclass and the cycle of behaviour which keeps them there. It's contrasted again and again (perhaps too heavily) with the hopeful message of Obama amid the collapse of the global economy as the mob, an organisation where money was never an issue, penny pinch in their dealings with life and death.
Andrew Dominik has crafted another classic with Killing Them Softly. More accessible than Jesse James and powered by a commanding performance from Pitt, it mixes dense, dark visuals with a curt humanism that sets it apart from others in the genre.
Director Joe Carnahan made everyone sit up and take notice with his blistering theatrical debut Narc in 2002. Coaxed into screens with help from Tom Cruise (who was one of the 20 plus producers on the film), it was an improbably gritty tale of a broken narcotics officer played by Jason Patric who comes up against more than he bargained for during the investigation into the death of a fellow policeman.
Carnahan seemed destined for the Hollywood big time, moving into pre- production on Mission: Impossible III with supposed buddy Tom Cruise but he soon left over creative differences. The director eventually returned to theatres with 2006's Smokin' Aces – a ridiculously over the top action film with few signs of the filmmaker who brought us Narc. And The A-Team has its moments, it seemed like the subtleties of the director had become lost in blockbuster filmmaking.
Well Carnahan fans, fear not. With The Grey, he's back and better than ever.
The film succeeds thanks to a masterfully wrought script from Carnahan, which is based on a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who also contributed to the adaptation. The film pits lead character Ottway (Neeson) against the trials of the weather and the landscape and the horrors of a pack of ravenous wolves but also against himself. He has taken a job at the end of the earth, surrounded by the dregs of humanity, and feels like this is just the kind of hell he deserves. Ottway accepts his new situation with resignation and almost recognition. The wolves are a real adversary but also, fundamentally, represents the personal demons the character has been trying, and failing, to face.
Carnahan takes what could have been a staid action B movie with stock macho characters and forces the audience to see them as people. Sometimes bad people yes but human beings nonetheless who have a right to live one more day, even if its just to spend that time drunk or wallowing in whatever defective life choices they have made. He makes you feel each death in the film, feel the loss of another valued life.
An early moment sees Neeson's Ottway comforting a mortally injured man after the plane crash. It's a moment of total compassion, giving the dying man a glimpse of better times as his gore streaked hands search frantically for some contact. And he finds it, in the grip of another survivor. It's a simply stunning moment, something unexpected and powerful and makes the mention of an Oscar nomination for Neeson far from laughable.
The Grey is shot through with touches of startling subjectivity, lead by Ottway's frequent voice over. It introduces us to his world and makes it clear that we're experiencing everything from his perspective. This also gives Carnahan the chance to toy with some arresting imagery, like Ottway's wife lying next to him on a bed of snow, a recurring visual motif that keeps the character going, alongside a letter he has written to her. The character keeps it as a talisman, as a chance for reconciliation, of a life beyond this current circumstance and it serves to make us all the more hopeful of his survival.
Neeson is on top of his game here, unhindered by even a whisper of an accent, he digs deep to bring out the complexities of a man who has given up on trying to live a good life. His physicality is a boon as well and his worn and functional hands a constant feature – weapons and tools of survival. He may carry most of the dramatic weight of the film, but his supporting actors are uniformly excellent. While the dialogue sometimes falls into repetitive macho territory, there's depth to every major character, with Dermot Mulroney and Dallas Roberts doing solid work. Most memorable is Frank Grillo who had a small role in last year's Warrior. Here as Diaz, he takes what could have been a stereotypical semi villain and crafts a tremendous arc for the character.
Carnahan is intent on providing more than a mere action movie with The Grey but doesn't completely shirk those responsibilities. Everything from the bone-jarring crash to the finale is handled with a gritty attention to detail and some fast but never confusing editing. Set pieces occur infrequently and lack the bravura of blockbuster films but it's that intimacy which makes it all the more engaging, even terrifying.
Strangely enough, it's with the wolves themselves that The Grey almost falters. Brought to life with a mixture of animatronics and CG, they often looks less than convincing and are used far too often throughout. A handful of CG sequences are effective, and there's menace in the physicality of an on set model but these enemies are at their most terrifying when they're unseen – like a nocturnal cavalcade of howls, etched only in half seen plumes of lupine breath.
But it's a minor issue in a film which does so many things right. The Grey is possessed of a bleak beauty, projecting the chill of the Alaskan wastes right into the theatre. It is bold and brash and macho, while also presenting moments of powerful emotional weight and even addressing themes of spirituality and the constant closeness of death. And the ending, when it comes, is mere inevitability, coming to a head in a burst of finely wrought lyricism and an indefatigable drive to live just one more day.
Carnahan seemed destined for the Hollywood big time, moving into pre- production on Mission: Impossible III with supposed buddy Tom Cruise but he soon left over creative differences. The director eventually returned to theatres with 2006's Smokin' Aces – a ridiculously over the top action film with few signs of the filmmaker who brought us Narc. And The A-Team has its moments, it seemed like the subtleties of the director had become lost in blockbuster filmmaking.
Well Carnahan fans, fear not. With The Grey, he's back and better than ever.
The film succeeds thanks to a masterfully wrought script from Carnahan, which is based on a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who also contributed to the adaptation. The film pits lead character Ottway (Neeson) against the trials of the weather and the landscape and the horrors of a pack of ravenous wolves but also against himself. He has taken a job at the end of the earth, surrounded by the dregs of humanity, and feels like this is just the kind of hell he deserves. Ottway accepts his new situation with resignation and almost recognition. The wolves are a real adversary but also, fundamentally, represents the personal demons the character has been trying, and failing, to face.
Carnahan takes what could have been a staid action B movie with stock macho characters and forces the audience to see them as people. Sometimes bad people yes but human beings nonetheless who have a right to live one more day, even if its just to spend that time drunk or wallowing in whatever defective life choices they have made. He makes you feel each death in the film, feel the loss of another valued life.
An early moment sees Neeson's Ottway comforting a mortally injured man after the plane crash. It's a moment of total compassion, giving the dying man a glimpse of better times as his gore streaked hands search frantically for some contact. And he finds it, in the grip of another survivor. It's a simply stunning moment, something unexpected and powerful and makes the mention of an Oscar nomination for Neeson far from laughable.
The Grey is shot through with touches of startling subjectivity, lead by Ottway's frequent voice over. It introduces us to his world and makes it clear that we're experiencing everything from his perspective. This also gives Carnahan the chance to toy with some arresting imagery, like Ottway's wife lying next to him on a bed of snow, a recurring visual motif that keeps the character going, alongside a letter he has written to her. The character keeps it as a talisman, as a chance for reconciliation, of a life beyond this current circumstance and it serves to make us all the more hopeful of his survival.
Neeson is on top of his game here, unhindered by even a whisper of an accent, he digs deep to bring out the complexities of a man who has given up on trying to live a good life. His physicality is a boon as well and his worn and functional hands a constant feature – weapons and tools of survival. He may carry most of the dramatic weight of the film, but his supporting actors are uniformly excellent. While the dialogue sometimes falls into repetitive macho territory, there's depth to every major character, with Dermot Mulroney and Dallas Roberts doing solid work. Most memorable is Frank Grillo who had a small role in last year's Warrior. Here as Diaz, he takes what could have been a stereotypical semi villain and crafts a tremendous arc for the character.
Carnahan is intent on providing more than a mere action movie with The Grey but doesn't completely shirk those responsibilities. Everything from the bone-jarring crash to the finale is handled with a gritty attention to detail and some fast but never confusing editing. Set pieces occur infrequently and lack the bravura of blockbuster films but it's that intimacy which makes it all the more engaging, even terrifying.
Strangely enough, it's with the wolves themselves that The Grey almost falters. Brought to life with a mixture of animatronics and CG, they often looks less than convincing and are used far too often throughout. A handful of CG sequences are effective, and there's menace in the physicality of an on set model but these enemies are at their most terrifying when they're unseen – like a nocturnal cavalcade of howls, etched only in half seen plumes of lupine breath.
But it's a minor issue in a film which does so many things right. The Grey is possessed of a bleak beauty, projecting the chill of the Alaskan wastes right into the theatre. It is bold and brash and macho, while also presenting moments of powerful emotional weight and even addressing themes of spirituality and the constant closeness of death. And the ending, when it comes, is mere inevitability, coming to a head in a burst of finely wrought lyricism and an indefatigable drive to live just one more day.
