"It took far too long for the unemployment rate to start falling, and it has been falling far too slowly. But “unemployment should be falling faster” is not a crisis."Spoilers.
Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly was really good. You'll like it better if you're a fan of Quentin Tarantino and "The Wire" as I am. The reviews haven't been as good as I thought the movie deserves. Maybe it's the liberals who see it as bashing Obama's hopey-changey talk, but I didn't see it that way. To me, Brad Pitt's character Jackie is agreeing with Chris Haye's thesis* that America's meritocratic system and elite have failed. America is all about getting paid and nothing about solidarity. To use Jared Bernstein's terminology, Obama is saying America's tradition is WITT (We're In This Together) while Pitt's Jackie asserts that it's YOYO (You're On Your Own) and all about business and getting paid. So I don't see the film as a critique of Obama (whose favorite character on the Wire was Omar) in the tradition of the Thaddeus Stevens ultra types like Duncan Black, Digby, Firedoglake, and Crooked Timber. Obama's speeches appeal to people who want to believe the US isn't a class society and that the elite isn't corrupt, but in passing real-world health care legislation, for example, he was able to engage in successful Lincolnesque politicking and horse-trading and didn't just relay on inspiring rhetoric.
The plot of the movie involves the heist of a mob poker game. A low level gangster (Vincent Curatola's Johnny "The Squirrel" Amato) gets the idea to rob one because the mobster who runs it (Ray Liotta's Markie Trattman) once ripped of his own game and then later bragged about it. For some reason he was given a pass and people now attend his games again because of the understanding that if he did it again he'd be dead and who would be stupid enough to do it again? Trattman doesn't come off as that stupid even if he was stupid enough to once brag about his first heist. Anyway, Amato's idea is to hold up the game since Trattman will get blamed and he wants to do it quickly before anyone else gets the idea. He asks a young ne're-do-well Frankie played by Scott McNairy to find a partner to do the job and then they'll split the proceeds.
The movie works because McNairy is a good actor and Frankie is well written. Pace Felix Salmon, Frankie is in constant crisis and can't get a good job despite the fact he's not that bad a guy. He's not a good guy though, being in and out of jail and ultimately agreeing to do the job. He brings in his only friend/acquaintance an Aussie junkie named Russel played by Ben Mendelsohn. Amato doesn't like the junkie but he's in a rush.
Frankie displays his naivite by repeatedly saying that Amato and Russell haven't been bad to him. And since that's the case in the YOYO world of gangsters he inhabits he feels he needs to stick up for them in turn. So he seems sort of redeemable in his naivite, if only he didn't pull an Omar and rob some mobsters.
Enter the hitman Jackie played by Pitt. He's been hired by the mob to figure out who ripped off the game and then kill them. Just as Trattman once bragged about robbing his own game, Russell the junkie unwisely brags about his successful robbery. So Jackie quickly finds out who he needs to kill. (Why are criminals so often so stupid and indiscreet?)
The mobsters who attend the various games around town believe Trattman did it again. So Jackie advises his mob contact and paymaster (played by Richard Jenkins) to kill Trattman also, just to get the games going again. Jenkins's middle-manager mobster agrees. Trattman knows Jackie, so Jackie brings in another hitman named Mikey played by James Gandolfini to kill him.
Mikey makes a nice contrast to Jackie Mikey is rude to the "help", i.e. waiters and hookers, and stiffs them on tips. He's a miserable mess after years of being a hitman. Jackie on the other hand makes an effort to be courteous and polite to Felix Salmon's second class citizens. His thuggish driver tries to steal the tip Jackie left for a waitress which pisses him off. Yet he's a killer. And yes he believes America isn't a family or one society, but rather a business of transactions and YOYO morality. Yet Jackie spares an effort for Salmon's luckless second class Americans. He would rather "kill them softly" at a distance than be sadistically up close and personal about it.
To me it seems like Jackie is upset at the end because he was forced to kill the naive Frankie up close after spending some time with him. He rants at Jenkin's corporate paymaster, the symbol of our YOYO system and its meritocratic elite. Maybe he'll end up miserable like Mikey and he's also upset because he understands that possibilty.
Pace the liberal movie critics, I believe Jackie isn't so much upset at Obama as upset at his situation at the end of the movie: seeing his future self in Mickey; having to kill the naive luckless Frankie up close and not softly, and finally the aggravation of being nickle and dimed by the meritocratic elite via Jenkins. That's the last straw. Obama's pieties just set him off.
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*Throughout the movie, set in the fall of 2008, television and radios play in the background reporting news of the meritocratic elite's epic failure: the financial crisis and credit crunch. The name of the city where the movie takes place is never mentioned, but the film was shot in New Orleans even though George Higgins's book was set in Boston. Filmmaker Dominik also has a radio commentator expressly link the financial crisis with the poor execution of the Iraq war, which is Hayes's thesis: Our elite suck.
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