A truly unsettling experience to watch a movie this cynical about 2008 America while in 2020 America

Part of Dastardly Difficult December: film nr.99

So this is a film about (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) a couple of low life criminals that (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) rob a poker game and get their come uppance. It´s also about (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) the guy going after the two low life (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) criminals that robbed the poker game. It's also about a guy with glasses (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) who screws hookers and drinks a lot and serves (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) no other purpose. It's also about another guy with glasses who (WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!) sits in a car most of the time.

Beautifully shot, sometimes funny, sometimes very violent film that keeps screaming in my face that it has a message instead of making that message relevant.

(WE'RE IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS!!)

those mobsters sure do listen to a lot of talk radio

brad sweetie honey baby you know i love you but if you could stop making movies about the economy i’d really appreciate it. they’re so boring and i’m so tired brad

"This county is fucked, I tell ya. There's a plague comin.'"

That cynicism hits different in 2020. Some would say that our twilight day renewed appreciation of didactic art is the mark of a degraded and vapid era where most people simply lack the critical faculties to appreciate anything other than explicit, easily-defined art. Other would say this renewed appreciation is the result of the collapse of the post-war middlebrow (product of Breton Woods and the CIA) critical consensus in the face of the underlying collapse of the necessary economic conditions. I say Brad Pitt rules in this, Gandolfini is legendarily disgusting, Mendo is the single wettest scumbag to appear on film, and they're all spitting George V. Higgins dialogue.

"Why are you being so fucking strident?
"Strident?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Um, you should leave."

First time I saw this I was all, "Lay off the horn, I get it with your neat little analogy." But on a rewatch that's quantitatively so little of the whole. Instead, focus on the relentless momentum (both of words and actions), the efficient translation of Higgins' gangland socioeconomy, the ostentatious formal flourishes, and the idiosyncratic performances. Yeah, it smugly makes its themes thuddingly obvious, but compared to the current glut of Amer-Indie crime thrillers this might even be another THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, quite the novel jewel. Using the Velvet Undergound's "Heroin" over the scene of the guy shooting heroin is simultaneously an incredible and incredibly mistaken set of balls.

a better movie about the financial collapse than The Big Short.

No one in the history of mankind has ever looked sweatier than Ben Mendelsohn does in every single scene of this film.

This film originally bombed, but its depiction of a series of gangland misunderstandings that serve as a metaphor for America’s deteriorating underbelly feels perfectly calibrated to our present political moment.

“I'm living in America, and in America, you're on your own. America's not a country. It's just a business. Now fucking pay me.“

I can't explain it but this movie feels like a wet sock

In spite of the central message not fully gelling with me, Killing Them Softly is a mesmerizing work of genius musical ques, powerhouse dialogue that flows like lava, and performances that are as subtle as they are deeply potent. It's a film that is the equivalent of a spider crawling around in your room at night. It moves slowly, but surely; focused on one goal as it crawls inevitably towards a knockout conclusion. This is one film that deserves to be called a 'gem'.

And the set-piece moments are absolutely nuts.

"This guy wants to tell me we're living in a community. Don't make me laugh. I'm living in America, and in America, you're on your own. America's not a country. It's just a business. Now fucking pay me."

Release the Cannes cut

“Now fucking pay me.”

Decent mob-adjacent movie. Brad Pitt being generic tough guy Brad Pitt. Shallow jabs at “the American dream”. Good soundtrack.

Excellent noir/allegory flick. Stylish as hell with a towering performance from James Gandolfini and great work from Brad Pitt as well. Definitely not subtle about it’s below the surface message but subtlety isn’t everything and this movie just worked for me. Will definitely revisit.

how is this man so beautiful

That slowmo scene alone is worth a 4 star rating I mean my god

My friend, Jefferson's an American saint because he wrote the words, " All men are created equal", words he clearly didn't believe, since he allowed his own children to live in slavery. He was a rich white wine snob who was sick of paying taxes to the Brits. So yeah, he wrote some lovely words and aroused the rabble and they went out and died for those words, while he sat back and drank his wine and fucked his slave girl. This guy wants to tell me we're living in a community? Don't make me laugh! I'm livin in America, and in America you're on your own. America's not a country, it's just a buisness... now fuckin pay me!

One of the more fascinating crime films I've seen, with a lot to say about the world

Great movie .. brad Pitt is killer

Fine crime thriller, great technical aspects. The writing was especially fun, not in the message it had, which wasn’t especially profound but not mindless either, but it the characters it made, which were impossible to be thought of as boring. It made me curious about its source material too.

Pretty high level of craft on display here, though no one in this thing is remotely redeemable. (Not even Pitt’s character, though he comes the closest, principled as he is.) Well-written and well-acted, though Frankie and Russell drove me nuts - they’re just so darn sloppy. Dominik nicely weaves in voiceovers from the news which capture the economic and political climate of the day — imagine how a couple of key scenes here play differently without them — though he ultimately expresses an incredibly bleak view of America.