THE BIG SHORT Is An Effective But Messy Rage Against The Machine

THE BIG SHORT Review:

- There remains a lingering anger over the fallout - or lack thereof - from the financial crisis of 2008. How could it be that the banks and Wall Street ultimately emerged relatively unscathed, with almost no one facing repercussions or prosecution for their oftentimes illegal conduct? For many - myself included - the exact circumstances that led to the crisis, and the particular ways that bankers gamed the system and screwed countless Americans, remained murky. But THE BIG SHORT makes it its mission to explain to viewers just how big of a scam Wall Street pulled on the public in the years leading up to the crash. From Adam McKay - the director best known for over-the-top comedies like Anchorman - THE BIG SHORT channels the manic energy of McKay's previous films into a more serious and purposeful form of satire. The film wears the chip on its shoulder proudly, and its rage is infectious. To that end, it wholly succeeds at its goal of getting you angry, pissed-off, and demanding that someone be held accountable.

McKay directs the movie with a wild abandon, channeling a sort of Scorsese-on-acid vibe that injects the film with a sense of meta playfulness. I'm not 100% sure if it works though. One of the most distinct aspects of the movie is McKay's use of fourth-wall-breaking narration. Sometimes, it comes from characters in the film - like Ryan Gosling's slick, alpha-male investor. Sometimes though, it comes from tongue-in-cheek cutaways in which Margot Robbie, as herself, explains financial terms while taking a bubble bath. I give McKay points for trying something different, but the cutaways feel extraneous, and like a distraction from the main narrative. Additionally, they sort of cut away at the distance between filmmaker and subject matter in a way that's a little uncomfortable. I mean, people criticized Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street for glamorizing its hedonistic, predatory subjects - even though Scorsese's film was in fact a pretty biting critique. But imagine if Scorsese had broken the fourth wall in a way that undermined his own satire? That's sort of what it feels like McKay is doing here. Even as he skewers the sleazy machismo and excess of Wall Street, he also seems to sort of revel in it. How else to explain naked Margot Robbie used as a narrator? It's audacious and unique, and I sort of see what McKay is going for - but again, it almost makes it feel like McKay is approaching the movie as a guy who on one hand is happy to skew Wall Street, but who also wouldn't mind getting invited to their stripper-filled, coke-binging holiday parties.

All that aside, the real meat of the film is in its parade of colorful characters who each recognized the oncoming crash before most (or, at least, most who were willing to openly admit it was on the way). The three standouts to me are Gosling, Christian Bale, and Steve Carell - all three of whom are in absolute top form. Starting backwards, Carell is a scene-stealer - and pretty much steals the movie - as a tightly-wound banker who - based on Gosling's sales pitch - makes a big bet that a housing crash is imminent. There is no real moral center in this film, but Carell perhaps comes closest. If nothing else, he is the guy in the movie who, after having experienced personal trauma, now reaches the point of giving zero %$&#'s. He calls people on their bull$^&$ left and right, with nary a regard for being the crazy guy in the room. Gosling's hustler is looking to profit. So is Bale's eccentric genius - but mostly, he's wrapped up in his own head - lost in a maze of esoteric equations and data streams. But Carell is the guy who, though he wants to be right, what really drives him is a festering disgust with the lies that his peers tell and the lengths they are willing to go to manipulate and re-shape reality to their liking. It's a great, great performance from Carell. Gosling is really good as well - and incredibly funny. Bale, too, is fantastic. He is a shorts-and-tee-shirt guy in a world of custom-made suits - a head-banging outsider who seems to be the only guy in Wall Street circa 2008 not in it to be in it, if you know what I mean. Bale is often at his best playing a guy with a screw loose, and he nails it here.

For all of its flash, THE BIG SHORT actually ends up being a pretty legitimately educational movie. I came a way with a much better understanding of subprime mortgages and the housing market and all of the factors that led to the '08 crash. The movie's ADD style is actually its way of overcompensating for really getting into the weeds of the financial industry, and for serving as a fairly comprehensive overview of the banking world. I'm just not fully sure that the movie ever finds the human center of its story. Carell's story-arc is the only one that has a real *reaction* to the lies and corruption we're seeing play out before us. Bale's arc is that he's a quirky outsider proven right. Gosling's is that he's an opportunist whose risky bet paid off. And then there are the "garage" investors - played by Finn Wittrock and John Magaro (guided by a gliding-through-the-movie Bradd Pitt, as an investor turned zen hippie) - who defy expectation but who never really grow as characters or as people. And so, the movie works best when focused on Carell, but has a bit of an empty feeling when it centers on the other characters.

I think THE BIG SHORT is an important movie for the way it gets you invested in the details of what caused the '08 financial crash, and opens your eyes to the way the financial industry screwed people, profited from said screwing, and then ultimately and unfairly got off mostly scott free. But as a narrative, it falters in finding the right way to tell us this story in a way that works as a story. The point of the movie is clear and powerful, but the road to arrive at that point is sort of messy. THE BIG SHORT is the cinematic equivalent of a long and angry and slightly drunken rant.

Still, the film is a very interesting departure for McKay, and it's filled with some terrific performances, moments of real humor, sharp satire, and effective raging against the machine. It's maybe the best campaign ad for Bernie Sanders of 2015. And it's a movie well worth checking out.

My Grade: B+

FURY Is Beautifully Brutal, But Not Quite Great

FURY Review:

FURY has a lot going for it, but ultimately, it seems torn as to what kind of movie it wants to be. Director David Ayer tends to gravitate towards pulpy, hyperviolent action. But his best film, the underrated End of Watch, went beyond that and mixed tense action with fleshed-out character drama and operatic storytelling. FURY looks to achieve something similar, but it feels like a message movie in search of a message. War is hell, we know, but what we don't know, really, is who the characters are that populate the movie's nightmarish battlefields. There's not quite enough there to give the film the poignancy it needs to 100% resonate. But even so, there is enough in FURY to make it well worth watching: namely, truly epic action and warfare that, thanks to a great cast, provides plenty of excitement.You sort of wish that Ayer had just gone full pulp, and done the comic book war movie that he seems to have wanted to make. But the part of the film that wants to be Saving Private Ryan won't let that happen. And so we're left with an entertaining mash-up of Private Ryan and Sgt. Rock that feels like something striving for, but just missing greatness.

The film takes place in 1945, during the final days of World War II. Hitler's armies are on the defensive, but rather than surrendering, Hitler decides to make one more desperate, bloody push as the allies roll through Germany. Helping to lead the allied charge is Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Bradd Pitt), a squinty-eyed tank commander who's been to hell and back with his battle-tested crew. The names read off like the roll call of an old war comic book: Wardaddy, Gordo, Bible. Oh, and The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal plays a wild-eyed loose cannon nicknamed "Coon-Ass." It's a motley crew of soldiers, and after one of the unit is killed in a harrowing battle, he's replaced, sure enough, by a fresh-faced recruit - Norman - whose military experience to this point was mostly behind a desk. And so Norman - played by Logan Lerman of The Perks of Being a Wallflower - serves as our eyes and ears into this world of death and danger, swagger and scarred psyches. Norman is thrown right to the wolves, too. Nearly as soon as he joins Wardaddy's crew, the tank is dispatched to head straight into the abyss, to ward off the stronger and sturdier German tanks that stand between the allies and final victory.

Lerman is a fantastic actor, and he really is the heart and soul of this film. Sure, he plays a part that's all-too-familiar in these sorts of movies - the boyish, virginal, rookie whose moral compass has not yet been tainted by the harsh realities of war. But Lerman really elevates the part, keeping you hanging on Norman's every action and reaction. It also helps that the well-oiled tank crew he's thrown in with consists of such great actors. Pitt is at his best as Wardaddy - bringing a sort of John Wayne, stoic cool to the leader who, nonetheless, has that far-off look in his eyes that tells us he's seen some serious $#%& in his day. Michael Pena is also excellent as Gordo, the sane one in the group. His opposite is Bernthal's Coon-Ass, who amps up his Walking Dead shtick to eleven, playing the would-be badass who might hug you or kill you at any given moment, depending on how drunk he is. Bernthal is the new king of playing the unhinged loose cannon, and he does a great job with it here. Surprisingly, Shia LeBeouf is also pretty damn good as Bible, the soft-spoken preacherman who tries to keep the faith even in the seemingly godless arena of battle. Who knew - when LeBeouf is restrained and deliberate as he is here, he can actually act, and even bring a real sense of gravitas to the role. Suffice it to say, the cast is top-to-bottom fantastic, and seeing these actors interact is one of the best parts - if not the best - of the film.

Ayer gives the film a gritty look that lacks the grandeur of many war films, but still feels epic in a smaller, more confined way. The thing of it is that the movie - like its characters - loves the tank (named "Fury," hence the movie's title) that sits at the core of this tale. And the tank - with its cramped, unforgiving, claustrophobia-inducing interior and dusty, grey-metal exterior, is what gives the movie its central aesthetic. The movie makes great effort to put the viewer into that tank, and the film does a fine job of both making you feel like you're there in those cramped confines, and of showing the rhythm of the tank's operation. There's a certain pleasure in simply watching the members of Wardaddy's team operate this heavy machinery, and the movie revels in all the little details that make the tank go.

FURY is brutal. Ayer never shies away from hardcore violence, and he seems hellbent on showing us just how hellish war can be. But to what end? There's a slightly strange tonal inconsistency here. Read between the lines, and the message is that war is falsely glorified by would-be heroes and soldiers, but that ultimately it's ugly, deadly, and a waste of human potential. In a way, it's a fascinating statement to make in a World War II film, as so many films about "the last great war" tend to glorify it, and tend to gloss over some of the death and violence for the sake of not undermining the righteousness of the cause. So there is a potentially interesting and bold point to be made - that even this righteous war was brutal, ugly, and more so a human tragedy than a human victory. But that message that Ayer seems to want to convey never 100% resonates, and is mired in some thematic messiness and a lot of action that seems to strive to be cool rather than look-away ugly.

It's a tough line to walk, and FURY at times feels torn as to what sort of movie it is and what, exactly, it wants to say. But if looked at solely as a semi-pulpy men-on-a-mission movie, it's pretty damn good. Guys like Pitt, Bernthal, and Lerman are good enough and charismatic enough that you don't necessarily need a ton of backstory or character-centric moments for their characters to feel compelling. And the "mission" itself - the journey of this movie - is in and of itself a pretty captivating and riveting one. I just think that extra oomph and thematic focus is missing that would have elevated this from "very good" to "great."

My Grade: B+

12 YEARS A SLAVE Is Brilliant and Poetic Depiction of the American Nightmare

 12 YEARS A SLAVE Review:

- 12 YEARS A SLAVE is such a unique, in some ways unusual film, that I honestly wasn't sure what to make of it, exactly, upon leaving the theater. This sprawling tale of American Slavery doesn't feel at all like what we've come to expect from films dealing with this era or with this narrative. Director Steve McQueen includes absolutely no flourishes of Spielbergian grandiosity in his film. Instead, he uses long, unwavering takes to create a film filled with artfully-depicted brutality, and positively overflowing with a feeling of overpowering, existential dread. The mix of unfiltered ugliness mixed with lyrical, poetic storytelling (and some sprinkling of gallows humor - both literal and figurative) creates a movie that plays out like a waking nightmare for its protagonist, the sold-into-slavery Solomon Northup. The result is a film that's utterly engrossing and endlessly praise-worthy. This is a film that has literary depth and subtext, but that also crackles with memorable visuals and cinematic sweep.

Solomon is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and it's a career-making performance. Ejiofor brings a soulful, restrained dignity to the character that I don't think I fully appreciated until late in the film. I describe the performance in these terms because Solomon starts the movie as a free, educated black man - a man who enjoys a relatively decent and undeniably joyful life - with a loving wife, two young children, and respected in his upstate New York town as a knowledgeable and trustworthy builder. However, it's his hobby that gets him into trouble - his skill as a fiddle-player attracts the attention of two traveling entertainers who convince Solomon to accompany them for a few of their shows. When Solomon is deceived by the musicians, he suddenly wakes up in a dark prison, having been abducted, taken down south, and sold into slavery. And from that point on, he has to hide who he really is. Because all the things that helped him get ahead up North - his smarts, his eloquence, his education - are liabilities as a slave. In order to survive, he has to show restraint, hide his thoughts, hide his intellect, hide his rage. And that is what makes Ejiofor's performance so remarkable. We see hints of what's going on in his head - in Solomon's eyes. But only rarely is he free to say what he really thinks. The dichotomy between who Solomon was and who he is forced to become is absolutely jarring. Because the white slave owners view him as lesser, animalistic, primitive - so too is this how he must act. And Ejiofor pulls off this tricky balance - this performance full of subtle expressions and telling glances - with aplomb. His Solomon never fully loses his dignity or his almost regal-like aura of calm and wisdom. But it's not for lack of trying on the part of the slave-owners who want to strip him of his humanity. What's remarkable about the film is the push and pull in that dynamic. Despite all efforts to break Solomon, to make him the prototypical, subservient slave - it's just impossible. The guy is too smart, too resourceful, too full of life for that sort of reductive psychology to fully take hold.

As good as Ejiofor is, he's surrounded by a remarkable supporting cast that is filled with equally award-worthy performances. There's two additional turns that really stand out to me though. One is Michael Fassbender as slave-owner Edwin Epps. Epps is the second slave-owner that Solomon is sold to (following a stint with the kinder and more sympathetic Ford, played by Benedict Cumberbatch), and he's a monster. The violence and rage he directs at his slaves is indicative of deep-seated psychological issues. Further complicating Epp's mania is his lustful obsession with one of the female slaves, Patsey. Epps puts Patsey on a pedestal, routinely praising her as his best worker in the fields. He also routinely rapes her, sapping her soul and demoralizing her to the point where she is hopeless and suicidal. Epps' disturbing relationship with Patsey drives his wife (a great turn from Sarah Paulson) off the wall, and Patsey and the other slaves find themselves caught in the volatile couple's tumultuous relationship. Fassbender is riveting as Epps though. He's a thoroughly despicable villain, but also a deeply complex character - a strange brew of madness and rage. But he is also emblematic of the disease of the mind that permeated throughout the antebellum south. How was it, we wonder, that so many could condone slavery, or even sadistically take pleasure in it? Epps', as a psychological profile, is case in point. Fassbender does wonders with the character - scary yet fascinating.

That leads me to Lupita Nyong'o as Patsey. Similar to Solomon, she must outwardly seem subservient and appreciative of her masters. But in Patsey's eyes, we see the bubbling sadness and hopelessness. We see the remnants of youth and girlhood, which we see all but stripped away by Epps. And when Patsey is pushed to limit, when she can take no more, Nyong'o turns in a gripping, jaw-dropping performance when she, as Patsey, lets the emotions flow freely in a rare moment of open expression. She and Solomon are two sides of the same coin. Solomon's lived the life of a free man, and so knows what it is that he lost as a slave. Patsey has known nothing but slavery, and can't even fathom what life outside of it is like. Suffice it to say, Nyong'o makes Patsey into the film's unlikely star - a supporting character whose horrifying treatment under Epps shows slavery at its worst and most soul-crushing.

So many other great little performances are scattered throughout the film. I mentioned Cumberbatch and Paulson, who are both excellent. Paul Giamatti shows up briefly but memorably as a sleazy slave-trader. The great Michael K. Williams, of The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, also makes a brief but badass cameo. Another small but crucial role is played by Garret Dillahunt (whose presence reinforces my perception that the film actually has a lot of stylistic and thematic similarities to the HBO series Deadwood). Dillahunt does here what he does best - he plays a slightly crazy and unhinged guy who Solomon takes a big risk in trusting. Alfre Woodard is another iconic actress who shows up for a small but vital role, playing a favored slave who has grown quite comfortable with her status. Now, I've heard some criticism of Bradd Pitt's role as a Canadian journeyman who provides a crucial bit of help to Solomon. I thought that Pitt's freewheeling persona proved a good fit for the part, and he provides a crucial counterpoint to characters like Epps. Pitt's puzzlement at slavery helps to paint the obsession that men like Epps have with it as a sort of infectious disease that had taken root in the minds of the antebellum south. At the same time, what seems like simple sanity to us now was, in that time and place, the very definition of radical and subversive thought. Finally, I've got to mention Paul Dano. Dano is just the best at playing loathsome, weaselly characters who very much deserve the punch-to-the-face that they inevitably receive. He's played that sort of character a lot, but this might be his best overall variation on that theme since There Will Be Blood.

Thinking about Dano's character, and Fassbender's, and other aspects of the film ... there is something slightly, undeniably pulpy about 12 YEARS A SLAVE. I keep mentioning this when I hear people say they're not sure they can stomach the film. It is violent, it is brutal, and it is at times disturbing. But to McQueen's credit, it's also an incredibly entertaining film. That takes nothing away from the seriousness of the subject matter, or the emotional weight of the movie. But McQueen also doesn't shy away from giving his film style and atmosphere, and even a bit of over-the-topness. I'll say that the movie's best scene is a weird mix of darkly funny and oddly disturbing. In the scene, Solomon is all but left for dead, set to be hung, before the men doing the hanging are stopped before Solomon can be fully strung up. And so Solomon is left with his toes just barely touching the ground, straining to keep himself from strangling to death. Solomon is gasping, panting, flailing. And all around him - as McQueen keeps his camera still and centered - we see others, black and white, simply going about their business - paying absolutely no attention to the guy right there, in front of them, on the very precipice of life and death. It's a scene that goes from scary to funny to scary again, and it's a weird Twilight Zone moment that, in its own way, completely summarizes the entire movie in miniature. Because yes, this is Solomon's story, but it's also the story of a supposedly civilized nation that had become a country of brainwashed zombies, stuck in a purgatory-like state in which, somehow, this sort of atrocity wasn't worth batting an eye over.

And so the film does have that pulpy aspect, that dark humor,  and that slightly skewed aesthetic that makes it more than your typical Hollywood-ized history lesson. There are a lot of layers here. And McQueen proves himself, above all else, a great storyteller - not telling his narrative in a completely linear or traditional sense, but in a way that's incredibly gripping, yet different from what one might expect from this sort of story. He doesn't talk down to the audience, or oversimplify things. He uses flashbacks and flash-forwards to create a sense of disorientation, to reinforce that nightmare feeling. He uses long takes many times - fixing his camera's lens on nature, on faces, on images - to make us pay attention to detail, focus on juxtaposition, and soak in the emotion of a moment.

I also think that John Ridley's screenplay is worth mentioning. Ridley also wrote Red Tails - a movie that is full on pulp (whereas 12 Years A Slave is only pulp-tinged, I'd say), but also one that I don't think really telegraphed Ridley's full potential. I mentioned the comparison to TV's Deadwood earlier, and that comparison comes to mind when I think of this film's colorful dialogue - a sort of formal prose that lends a certain gravitas to the words that are spoken. The mix of poetry and vulgarity, formality and brutality, is in keeping with the weird dichotomies of the movie's setting.

The whole film, in fact, is one of dichotomies. Its central story is that of a worldly and well-regarded man suddenly plunged into a hellish life of slavery, in which it is assumed that he is sub-human. In this world of degradation and humiliation, Solomon is surrounded by brutal men who also regard themselves as god-fearing Southern Gentlemen. And then there's the absurdity that always strikes me with stories about slavery - the fact that the slaves that were so looked down upon were, despite that, so ever-present and such a constant and integral part of their owner's lives.

12 YEARS A SLAVE does not fit the template of what a big Hollywood Oscar-bait movie is supposed to be, and I think that's what makes it so great. This is a film that's genuinely challenging and thought-provoking. At times, I'd even call it an art-film in certain respects for the non-traditional ways that some of its key scenes unfold. At other times, I agree with the sentiment that it plays out almost like a horror film or a Twilight Zone episode - with an ordinary man suddenly thrust into a nightmare scenario that completely turns his world upside down. There's that noir-ish feeling of fate conspiring against him, of being trapped in a dark void from which escape is a near-impossibility. But when you couple that creepy vibe with the fact that this is real history - an adaptation of a real person's autobiography - there is, again, that dichotomy: of real-life-meets-unreality. Life as waking nightmare. A warped, backwards version of the American Dream in which, instead of upward mobility, a man is dragged from the middle class all the way down to the bottom, made a slave, forced to endure hell, as part of some mass delusion about skin color determining one's worth as a human being. 12 YEARS A SLAVE doesn't give you that swell of emotion and triumph when it ends. It's not a crowd-pleaser that sends you home happy, or in tears for that matter. No, the feeling you get at the end of this film is one of waking up from a strange dream. A dream that you pinch yourself to make sure that, yes, it was, in fact, only a dream. But here's the brilliance of the movie - this wasn't just a dream. This happened. That took a while to register with me. It took a few days for the full achievement of this film to fully sink in. But now, I can look back and recognize the unique brilliance at play here, and I can heartily recommend this film as one of the true must-see movies of 2013.

My Grade: A

KILLING THEM SOFTLY Is a Pitch-Black Crime Comedy With Bite

KILLING THEM SOFTLY Review:

- Andrew Dominik made one of the best movies of the last decade in the underrated Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The man is clearly an ultra-ambitious director with little interest in sticking to convention, and is certainly a talent worth keeping an eye on. His latest film, KILLING THEM SOFTLY - his first since Jesse James - is another genre-bending boundary-pusher. It's a pitch-black crime flick that blends the uber-violence of Scorsese, the outlandish gallows-humor-laden dialogue of Tarantino, and the surrealistic, existentialist flourishes of the Coen Bros. The result is a fascinating, ultra-intense, often darkly hilarious movie that aims high, and that occasionally lives up to the size of its ambitions. Certainly, this ain't your run-of-the-mill crime flick.

In Killing Them Softly, we see the politics of American crime juxtaposed with American national politics. Namely, set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis and near-economic collapse, we see a parallel sort of  crisis playing itself out in the Boston underworld. When two low-level hoods decide to hold up a card game - whose participants include any number of the city's most prominent mob members - they inadvertently set off a chain of events that threatens to disrupt the entire local crime infrastructure. We follow the money to the top of the criminal food chain, where enforcers and hitmen are brought in in order to clean up the mess, resulting in a flurry of violence intended to reestablish the status quo and get back to business as usual.

Dominick is not subtle in how he juxtaposes the main story with the national financial crisis happening in the background. All throughout the film, we see and hear snippets of news coverage from 2008. We see George W. Bush, John McCain, and Barack Obama each weighing in on the ongoing economic firestorm. And as each talks of measures being taken to curb the problem, as we see Obama talk of hope and change, we in turn see a bleak, dark, criminal underworld that is both reflects and perverts the American Dream. Dominick takes a big gamble here - using political footage from 2008 so prominently means that he better have a damn good thematic thread that interweaves throughout the film. If he's trying to make a grand point, he better make it well. I think he only partially succeeds. I think most people will leave the movie scratching their heads, trying to connect the dots and wondering what, exactly, Dominick is trying to say here. In some cases, that's good - a work that invites discussion and open-interpretation can be a great thing. The problem is that KILLING THEM SOFTLY hits you over the head so hard with its juxtapositions that it seems to want to make a clear, easily-determined point. But what that point is, exactly - or what it all means - doesn't entirely register.

But ... forget about all that for a second. Because honestly, even if the political overtones don't 100% work, a lot of things in the movie do. Again, forget about the complaints above as I tell you that the real meat of the movie - the crime stuff - is mostly super-badass. There is a dark, dark intensity here that is edge-of-your-seat. And the humor - pitch-black - is great. Aided by a top-flight cast, Dominick crafts gripping heist scenes  and hilarious dialogue exchanges.

The plot of the film revolves around two career-criminal screw-ups - Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) who are convinced to attempt a risky, but potentially lucrative, scheme. The idea is that if they rob a high-powered underworld card game, no one will suspect them. Instead, they figure that the criminal higher-ups will point the finger of blame at a hood named Trattman (Ray Liotta), who tried to rob it once before. As it turns out, the robbery has numerous consequences both intended and unintended. It does indeed put the hapless Trattman in the hot-seat, but it also disrupts the regular card game now that the participants are afraid that they could be robbed at gunpoint at any time. The dissolution of the game, of course, creates a major financial vacuum in the criminal world. And so Jackie Cogan (Bradd Pitt) - a cool, collected, utterly ruthless mob enforcer, is brought in to straighten things out. Taking orders from a mysterious, well-dressed mob-lawyer (Richard Jenkins), Cogan recruits his best heavy - Mickey (James Gandolfini) to kill who needs to be killed and make sure that the money is once again flowing.

Let me talk for a second about the card game robbery that sets the movie's plot in motion. Wow - what a sequence. Mixing comedy (Frankie and Russell have yellow dishwashing gloves instead of regular gloves) and uber-intensity (any one of the heavy-hitters at the card table could whip out a gun at any moment and plug the two mooks), the whole robbery sequence pulses with the constant threat of danger. It's a bravura bit of filmmaking. Elsewhere, Killing Them Softly has some of the most darkly humorous exchanges I've ever seen on film. Frankie and Russell have a great dumb-and-dumber dynamic, and their dimwitted, drug-addled conversations are fantastic and funny. Same goes for just about every scene involving James Gandolfini's unstable hitman Mickey - a guy who sheds no tears over killing a man but who keeps getting broken up over the poor state of his marriage. He drowns his sorrows in an ocean of drinking, prostitutes, and lethargy ... which leads to a great contrast with Pitt's on-point, uber-cool Jackie. Pitt also has a great chemistry with Richard Jenkins - with Pitt's ear-to-the-street know-how coming up against Jenkins' ear-to-the-big-bosses bureaucratic bookkeeping. The various dialogue exchanges have a Tarantino-esque sizzle to them, and are consistently entertaining and clever - and often, as mentioned, really freakin' funny.

And the cast is basically perfect for this sort of thing. McNairy and Mendelsohn have an awesome comedic chemistry. Pitt's role isn't that different from others he's played, but we all know that Pitt is at his best when he's playing someone who's at least a little bit nuts. And Jackie Cogan - thought cool as a cucumber on the outside - is definitely at least a little bit nuts. He's a guy who will act all buddy-buddy before blowing your brains out, who will talk casually about beating the crap out of a guy the same as he would about running an errand. Ray Liotta gives Trattman a starry-eyed charm that makes it that much more hard-to-watch when he's set up to be the mob's fall guy for the robbery. A great turn from the crime flick veteran. Gandolfini is awesome here. He puts 110% into the role of Mickey, it's one of those acting jobs where the actor goes all-in, making every lip-curl, finger-point, and labored breath a part of the character. Jenkins - playing a character in some ways similar to the one he portrayed in Cabin in the Woods, is also reliably excellent.

Dominick lends most of the film a straightforward intensity, but he also tries for a number of artistic flourishes (in addition to the political excerpts). Some work very well (a slo-mo scene of Pitt gunning down a victim on the road), others seem like too much and go on for too long (an attempt to embellish Frankie and Russell's drugged-up conversation with lots of trippy fade-outs becomes more annoying than novel). But Dominick displays a lot of raw talent and exciting ingenuity here. It's clear the guy's legit - you just wonder if he is trying to do too much with a story that's essentially a pretty straightforward crime yarn.

And that's why KILLING THEM SOFTLY is so fascinating, and a movie that is well worth checking out despite its flaws. If left to its own devices, the story of Jackie Cogan and the darkly-absurd inner-workings of America's criminal underground may have made for a compelling little film. Guys like Scorsese have taken such stories and made them multilayered American parables, without ever needing to get overtly political or on-the-nose with their broader themes. But Dominick swings for the fences, and tries to make a mini-epic out of this relatively compact and small-scale story. It could have worked ... maybe. But I don't know if he convincingly made me believe that the crime story in Killing Them Softly was somehow a microcosm of America or the financial crisis. Still, I suppose the movie does make the point that even crooks can feel the squeeze when the economy is hurting, and that there is indeed a hidden, shadowy layer to the great American economy that is co-dependent on the same institutions and rides the same ebbs and flows as any other business. Point being - the film says some interesting things, some funny things, and some pretty damn bleak things about America ... even if what it says never feels totally cohesive. But there is still a cerebral quality to the sex drugs and violence that tinges the film's nihilistic tone with a bit of thought-provoking intellectualism. It's a very interesting experiment - and we need more movies that take these kinds of swing-for-the-fences risks.

My Grade: B+