Killing Them Softly (2012)

All Critics (207) | Top Critics (45) | Fresh (157) | Rotten (51) | DVD (1)

'Killing Them Softly' collapses under the crushing weight of the director's narcissism.

December 4, 2012 Full Review

Richard Roeper

Richard Roeper.com

Top Critic

Like its source material, the movie is stylish, profane, intelligent, and eminently diverting. But as much as it is a delight that Dominik has disinterred Higgins's work, it is a mild disappointment that the result is not more substantial.

November 30, 2012 Full Review

Christopher Orr

The Atlantic

Top Critic

Trading in pleasures of a deliberately rarefied sort, writer-director Andrew Dominik's talky, character-rich genre piece largely short-circuits thrills to sketch a grimly funny portrait of thugs taking care of business, in every rotten sense of the word.

November 30, 2012 Full Review

Justin Chang

Variety

Top Critic

Ultimately, as crafted as Killing Them Softly is, it's less satisfying than either The Sopranos or Goodfellas. Still, Dominik and his cast cruise some very mean streets indeed.

November 30, 2012 Full Review

Lisa Kennedy

Denver Post

Top Critic

The dialogue is sharp and so are the performances. Andrew Dominik directed this neo-noir in a low-key comic style that's alternately gritty and fancy. The gritty stuff is best.

November 30, 2012 Full Review

Peter Rainer

Christian Science Monitor

Top Critic

Dominik ... expertly captures the flavor of his Higgins source material.

November 30, 2012 Full Review

Soren Anderson

Seattle Times

Top Critic

Andrew Dominik's follow-up to 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' too often fails to engage with its uneven mix of guns and gab.

May 13, 2013 Full Review

Al Alexander

The Patriot Ledger

Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly is a potent and miraculously-shot film that captures America's recent financial collapse through a criminal lens.

March 24, 2013 Full Review

Jeremy Lebens

We Got This Covered

This slight package does Killing Them Softly no real favors. But the film itself may prove enduringly fascinating, if only in its function as an arch object of its era.

March 24, 2013 Full Review

John Semley

Slant Magazine

A noir-ish crime drama with a brain, and despite its flaws and inconsistencies, a film worth seeing. Dominik remains a filmmaker to watch.

March 21, 2013 Full Review

Dan Jardine

Cinemania

Complex and problematic in a rather wonderful way, Killing Them Softly has flaws more interesting than some film's perfections.

March 4, 2013 Full Review

Catherine Bray

Film4

Brad Pitt excels amongst an incredible ensemble cast in this gritty crime thriller.

March 3, 2013 Full Review

Tom Glasson

Concrete Playground

There are many cinematic cardinal sins, but the latest film from Aussie director Andrew Dominik commits two of the big ones - Don't Be Boring and Don't Waste A Great Cast.

February 12, 2013 Full Review

Matt Neal

The Standard

A top-notch, viscerally powerfully mobster movie with a view of free-market enterprise as practiced at its most harrowingly basic, last-man-standing level.

February 4, 2013 Full Review

Neil Pond

American Profile

Australian director Andrew Dominik mixes conventional mobster mayhem with an unconventional take on gangsters caught up in the Great Recession. And with Brad Pitt as his ideologically enraged male muse hitman, as if wandering in from Occupy Wall Street.

January 5, 2013 Full Review

Prairie Miller

WBAI Radio

While Dominik flourishes when it comes to the picture's excessive violence, he seems to be unable to balance those sequences with the drawn-out scenes of dialogue, which, while delivered nicely, kill any momentum the film might have had.

January 4, 2013 Full Review

Jeremy Wheeler

TV Guide's Movie Guide

Good actors and unimpeachable source material hampered by faulty chatter, leading to thumb-twiddling.

December 20, 2012 Full Review

Kelly Vance

East Bay Express

Director Andrew Dominik controls the clock

December 14, 2012 Full Review

Marty Mapes

Movie Habit

Weary and familiar foray in to gangster turf

December 14, 2012 Full Review

Robert Denerstein

Movie Habit

It's a rollercoaster: long talky tete a tetes, punctuated with shocking violence (both of which are masterfully presented).

December 12, 2012 Full Review

Staci Layne Wilson

StaciWilson.com

Killing Them Softly finds its own rhythm and eventually its own way of building dread, punctuated by bravura cinematic moments that won't soon be forgotten

December 12, 2012 Full Review

Eric Melin

Scene-Stealers.com

The completely obvious comparison to the mobster world and our American economic system is a welcome, straight-forward surprise for storytelling.

December 11, 2012 Full Review

Jeff Bayer

The Scorecard Review

The pace is deliberate, yet that simmering sociopolitical undercurrent gives Killing Them Softly more weight than its rather conventional concept might suggest.

December 10, 2012 Full Review

Todd Jorgenson

Cinemalogue.com

Jackie Cogan understands his fate in a way that the other smart guys don't quite, an understanding that makes him seem somehow smarter.

December 10, 2012 Full Review

Cynthia Fuchs

PopPolitics.com

Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) understands his fate in a way that the other smart guys don't quite, an understanding that makes him seem somehow smarter.

December 8, 2012 Full Review

Cynthia Fuchs

PopMatters

Killing Them Softly positions itself as a heady piece of entertainment, but it's ultimately no more intelligent than The Pet Goat.

December 7, 2012 Full Review

Matt Brunson

Creative Loafing

• 1. Mickey: I don't take orders from you!
  – Submitted by Kia M (3 months ago)
• 1. Jackie: What's the problem?
  2. Driver: It's murder and they're squeamish.
  3. Jackie: Oh, for fuck's sake! Who's running things?
  4. Driver: You have no idea! No decision makers. I gotta take them by the hand and I gotta walk them slowly through it like they're retarded children.
  5. Jackie: What is it, a committee?
  6. Driver: Total corporate mentality!
  – Submitted by Marina P (3 months ago)
• 1. Jackie: America is not a country. It's just a business. Now pay me.
  – Submitted by Jorge C (4 months ago)
• 1. Jackie: Don't make me laugh. I'm living in America. And in America, you're on your own. America is not a country. It's just a business. Now pay me.
  – Submitted by Jorge C (4 months ago)
• 1. Jackie: This guy wants to tell me we're living in a community? Don't make me laugh! I'm livin in America, and in America you're on your own. America's not a country, it's just a buisness... now fuckin pay me!
  – Submitted by Rich H (5 months ago)
• 1. Jackie: I live here in America. And in America, you're on your own.
  – Submitted by Moe J (5 months ago)