I had very high hopes for Killing Them Softly. With the tag team of Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini, this was a lock to be a great crime drama. Right? Right? Wrong. This didn't even come close to living up to what I had envisioned in my head. For starters, the story is very basic, by the numbers plot. A couple of low life thugs pull off a heist and then those higher up the food chain send in Pitt and Gandolfini into whack those responsible. The problem I had with the movie is that the pacing is just way too slow and there isn't one good reason to justify it. Actually, there is. The movie is 90 minutes. Not your typical length for a movie like this. So it makes sense they stretch this razor thin plot for all they could.

The other thing I didn't care for is the director getting a little too cute with some of the camera tricks and angles. I've never heard of Andrew Dominik, but watching what was on screen here, he comes off as someone that seriously wants to 'impress' his peers. The only problem is that it draws too much attention to itself, much like a demo reel of a new film maker. What was worse than the camera tricks was the audio. I get that some like to play with the pan left and pan right options to sell the idea that something is happening off screen, but the way it's done here is beyond absurd. To pan left or right 100% with no background noise to fill up the other side is just too jarring and not accurate of what would be happening in real life.

Both Pitt and Gandolfini were totally wasted in their roles here. It's not that the movie is horrible. It just doesn't do anything for me and I highly doubt anyone will like this all that much, even ones that love the genre, which I do. Maybe in time I may watch it again and give it another go around. But I don't see that happening for quite some time. Hate to say it, but this is a Skip.

I swore I wrote a brief review about Killing Them Softly. I’m pretty sure what I wrote or thinking was, I got extremely bored very quickly. I’m not even sure I saw Pitt by the time I turned it off. As Chip said, this did not stand out in any way from a typical thug movie.

I recommend a skip. Yep skip a Brad Pitt film