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."

Amazing cast! A slow-paced yet very suspenseful thriller.  Especially the first half hour.

Me ha parecido demasiado burda en su intento de parecerse a las películas de Tarantino, Ritchie y los Coen. No por decir muchas palabrotas o mostrar mucha sangre haces una película buena. Tampoco me ha gustado como se recrea con la cámara lenta y la música en algunos momentos, haciendo un Zack Snyder pero mal. Y el guión me ha parecido muy normalito y alargado. En fin, que la apruebo porque no está mal, pero no he parado de sacarle defectos ante su falta de personalidad.

2nd Andrew Dominick film I saw. Bruh. I'm blown away.

Politics, whether legal or illegal, is killing us softly.

I did not know a death could look that beautiful

Bravo for getting half of the cast of The Sopranos back together. I don't think the social commentary was subtle enough

Meh

More mob bureaucracy please.

So bad it's good maybe? Inexplicable Sopranos casting reunion with Ray Liotta and Brad Pitt thrown in, the audio clips from Bush and Obama interspersed through the movie, just lots of weird tonal directions. Overall worth watching even if the plot is just an elaborate 2 hour spin on the Jackie Aprile card game robbery.

This is a good movie. It’s just such a shame that it wasn’t a great movie. It has all the right puzzle pieces, the cast is amazing and does very well with the material, the text itself is very compelling. The issue is that the movie is not as great as the sum of its parts.