Thanks for the memories!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

After staging a robbery at his own gambling establishment, ""Markie Trattman" (Ray Liotta) learns what it is like to become an actual victim when a pair of gunmen named "Frankie" (Scoot McNairy) and "Russell" (Ben Mendelsohn) decide to rob the place a few weeks later. Although most of the underworld bosses figure Markie was innocent, the perception of his complicity lingers and a hit man by the name of "Jackie" (Brad Pitt) is hired to resolve the problem. Soon the situation becomes quite dire for everyone involved. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie definitely had some potential—especially considering the solid cast available. Unfortunately, the pace was much too slow and the script was unnecessarily inane and vulgar. To put it quite simply, it would have been more beneficial to have had more action and less conversation. As it was, I found this movie to be quite dull and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

This film could have been so good. It has Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta in main roles, but it never really came together. I was vastly disappointed when I watched this.Firstly, I was severely disappointed with Gandolfini's contribution who hardly appears in this film, despite being a phenomenal actor who was one reason why the Sopranos was so good.I also felt that the film tried way too hard in being arty and the time and effort it put into this could have been better spent elsewhere.Maybe I'm being unfair, this film wasn't all bad. It was funny at times. It made me laugh on occasion. Once or twice. Once.Read my full review here: http://goo.gl/pFHffd

I watched this movie because my copy of Child 44 was broken, so instead of going upstairs to grab a new movie I stayed where I was and switched on Netflix. I really wish that I'd just taken the effort to go upstairs instead. Killing Them Softly is a gangster movie about the most boring and uninteresting parts of being a gangster. The plot is a day in the life of a gangster, and it's really not all that interesting. Right from the get-go I wondered if I should really stick with this movie. The movie gets right into it, no explanations, nothing. I had no clue what the characters were talking about. As the movie progressed I figured it out, but it was just so unclear at first. The rest of the plot is fine, but it's so slow and uninteresting. There's no interesting plot twists or anything, and sometimes things weren't even clear. Again, they're explained more thoroughly afterwards, but considering the fact that the dialogue could barely explain something as simple as 'kill this guy because he stole from us' it really makes it hard to enjoy. I actually had to see the guy get shot before I understood. The characters, oh boy. The amount of interest that I had in them was nonexistent. And yet the movie tried to develop them. I know none of these characters are really all that important, so why force all these annoying, drawn-out, pointless 'conversations' with them? They're so uninteresting and the movie would have been better without them. At times I would zone out and when I came to the characters would say: "Now, to business" and I'd think 'well it's about bloody time'. The 'character development' was such an unbelievable pain to sit through. Character development isn't just about how long someone can ramble about topics that don't mean anything to anyone. It requires action in addition to conversation. The only good thing about this movie is the stylish violence. There was one scene that was very cool to watch. But was this enough to warrant a more positive rating? No. All the rest of the violence is just regular old violence. No style, nothing. I liked exactly one scene in this movie. Everything else? Not so much. Overall Killing Them Softly was a waste of time. It's slow, boring and uninteresting. But hey, at least there's one good scene. Maybe I just need to watch it with the right mindset, but because of my experience with it I highly doubt that I'll ever bother to re-watch it. In the end I would not hesitate to not recommend this movie.

When I heard they'd made a movie based on Cogan's Trade, I was eager to see it even tho the cockamamie title put me off. I consider Friends of Eddie Coyle to be one of the all-time classic gangster films & always wondered why none of George V Higgins' other crime novels had ever made it to film. Most of Higgins' plot exposition emerges thru dialog anyhow, so his books seem ready-made for film.Killing Them Softly turned out to be not quite in the same league as Eddie Coyle, but it might have been if they hadn't tried to fix what wasn't broken. Admittedly, a large part of my dissatisfaction with many a movie stems from knowing the books they're based on. Having just re-read Cogan's Trade for maybe the 6th time or so, I knew the story inside out. That's always a problem when they base a movie on one of your favorite books: you've built up clear images of each character & setting in your mind. You also know what's coming next, which can rob the action of considerable impact. Still, if the book's good, you want to savor it on film.This was well cast & acted, with Brad Pitt as hit-man/fixer Jackie Cogan, James Gandolfini as a subcontracted killer reluctant to ply his trade & Vincent Curatola in a small but pithy part as the conniving Johnny Amato. Higgins' original 1974 novel was transposed to the Obama era, which certainly makes sense from a producer's standpoint — you save money not shelling out for '70s cars or masking anachronistic street scenery — & maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Not what I would have preferred, but the story wasn't specifically tied into the '70s, so yeah, OK. And I do have to admit those voice-overs of Obama justifying the infamous Wall Street bailout added a nice touch of irony.My real gripe, what really spoils it for me, is that absolutely extraneous monologue in the bar at the end. Up till then, they'd stuck pretty close to the original & made a pretty decent movie out of it. But then they have Cogan react to a televised Obama speech by spouting off about Thomas Jefferson being a slave-owner & America being not a country but a business. Not that I disagree with the political sentiment expressed, but it just doesn't belong, it seems to have just parachuted in out of nowhere.Presumably they tacked this on in a gratuitous attempt to make the movie somehow more relevant for today's audiences, but it adds nothing to the story & today's relevance very quickly becomes yesterday's obscurity anyhow. Higgins' real mastery was always in the dialog, but some utterly deluded hack with a political axe to grind thought he could improve on Higgins. The sad part is that those in charge — who should have known better — let him try.