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.
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.