killing them softly: not all violence is created equal

Before the murders in Newtown, CT, on Friday, I had been thinking about writing about the most recent Brad Pitt movie. After the news came in, I thought about scrapping it or just writing about it later. Just the name of the film, Killing Them Softly, is a pretty terrible title for something to discuss right now.

And maybe I would have junked this post if I thought the movie glamorized violence. As graphic as it is, I don't think it does. Critics and people more generally kinda took a crap on this thing, and part of me wonders if it's because the movie is just too honest about assault and murder in America.

Before I get to that, though, maybe I should try to convince you that this movie isn't the bland stick-up film complains that Roger Ebert seems to think it is. At the very least, there are lots of small cinematographic moments that show it was made with care. One shot-reverse-shot sequence between Pitt and Scoot McNairy in a car ends on Pitt's side. Fine, whatever, but when the conversation ends, Pitt gets out of the car, and suddenly the view swings out as if attached to the car door. This is kind of gimmicky, since it doesn't add anything to the story, but it's the kind of detail that makes me grateful to the filmmakers for not just perpetrating another bland crime thriller on me.

But back to the point: By my count, there are at least three scenes that make this movie earn its violence.

In the first, two thugs go out to collect Markie, a local crook played by Ray Liotta. The beating he gets is stylized, but only very lightly, with the smallest details, like the sound of flash bulbs used to punctuate the blows. The scene is mostly just brutal, though, with Liotta winding up with a chin covered in deep red blood. It isn't creative enough to be gory, so it just comes across as pitiful. When I replay this is my head, I realize that the image is effective because characters rarely bleed this much in films, however many times they've been shot or punched. Which is to say, victims in the movies don't often look as bad as they probably would in reality, but here they do.

Another scene: A guy in a car is shot to death. The bullet exits the back of his head in slow motion, which sounds needlessly graphic, but the effect is kind of magical and unreal even as you are aware of how gruesome it all is. The glass of the window softly drops down like snowflakes, and a stream of blood begins emerging from the head. It's all spectacular but also slow enough to make you think about what you're seeing and the guy being drilled by the bullet. This isn't a Hollywood death that disappears as soon as it happens; we're not just seeing the person who kills but the one who is killed.

painting by ssoosay

Finally, there's a morgue scene toward the end of the movie. But 'scene' isn't quite the right word, because nothing whatsoever happens there. We just see two characters laid up there, fresh dead and cold. We get close-ups on each of their faces for just a moment, but that's a moment longer than most filmmakers would have bothered to show them. And there's not a shred of exposition in the scene, because we are already 100% positive that these guys are dead. We don't need to see them in the morgue except insofar as the director wants to remind us that this is where victims of violence end up.

Relatively few films have the artistic merit to really deserve their blood 'n' guts, if we're being honest about it, but Killing Them Softly does.