'Killing Them Softly'

Killing Them Softly opens in quintessential crime thriller/mobster fashion with a robbery committed by two less than bright petty criminals. Deadbeats Frankie and Russell rob a card game, organized by mobster Markie. As Markie is known to have robbed his own game years ago, they figure that they're on the safe side and no-one will come looking for them, as everyone will blame Markie. Here's the general principle of crime and capitalism though: someone always has to pay and before they know it, the two guys and their shady boss aptly named 'Squirrel' have a contract out on them. Enter Cogan, your friendly neighbourhood killer. Cogan only has one problem: He can't kill anyone he's met, so seeing that he knows Squirrel, he gives the job to Mickey, his old pal. Mickey's all washed up though and is only interested in the booze and hookers the town has to offer. Needless to say, the top dogs are unsatisfied with the run of things. One fuck-up follows another as the people who should make decisions don't and the people who shouldn't do.

The film is set in 2008 at the time of the Bush-Obama handover. As such, the characters listen to the Obama campaign on the radio or Bush defending his political choices on TV in the background. Whether mobsters really tune in to current events during a card game remains questionable, but at least the technique allows Andrew Dominik to hammer his point home. In the end, the only difference between crime and politics is in the name, as both operate according to the same economic principles or as Cogan would have it: America is a business. Set at the time when the American government asked the taxpayer to show solidarity and 'bail' the American banks out, it is hard not to see parallels to the Markie plot, as someone always takes the fall. Reality here does not exist, only the perception of it is important. And if the little man has to take the fall, so be it, even if 'Everybody loves Markie' as Cogan cynically states at the end. There might be a certain naïve simplicity to the points Dominik makes, but at the same time, it illustrates the cynicism of a society which knows perfectly well where it all goes wrong and renders itself guilty by compliance.

There's a three-level structure to the character built-up: there's the top level, the decision makers whose corporate thinking paralyses them and leads to unnecessary and expensive measures as they continuously lose their head. These guys remain anonymous, they are never named. Then there's middle management, mostly represented by Cogan, Driver, the lawyer figure (get it? As he drives the action forward) and the familiar cinematic figure of the alcoholic who's on the path to professional destruction in Mickey. Last there's the work force, the plebs so to speak, aptly represented by Frankie and Russell. So, during recession, the working class is fucked, the middle management is about to get fucked and the top management remains invisible and is looking to place the blame. There's a certain comfort in knowing that even hitmen have to take a paycut.

Corporate thinking has taken over crime and consumerism is the religion of the economically viable. As such it comes as no surprise that one of the murders is shot in a beautiful slo-mo mostly seen in perfume or car advertisements. The style here makes a direct comment on the essentially capitalist nature of this act, which has nothing to do with motive and all with appearance.

The film script is based on George V. Higgins' novel Cogan's Trade, which explains its heavy reliance on dialogue and a good thing this is too, as the strength of the film lies in the witty, fast, noir-ish quality of characters jabbing. Quite often, and hilariously so, the conversations between the criminals are in no way different from the ones had by office drones at the water cooler, including a lot, and I mean, a lot of bitching and moaning about management and bosses, over-blown stories of sexual achievements and piss takes at colleagues. This is a character-driven piece which lives through the quality of its actors. Pitt, who's already worked with Dominik on The Assassination of Jesse James, once again proves his versatility as an actor, a fact sometimes overshadowed by his celebrity status in the public opinion. Pitt renders Cogan utterly likeable and his actions understandable and we're talking about a psychotic sociopath here, but look: He takes care of is friends and can't kill anyone he knows. Pitt plays Cogan with an authority and twisted sense of fair-play one would wish for in a boss. He delivers Cogan's last speech of the film with an anger and cynicism that render the overall bleakness of this world, and indeed, our own world, even more explicit. Yes, we can? Actually, erm, you'll find that we can't.

One of the highlights of the film, of any film with him in it, and, yes, I am biased, is Richard Jenkins. Jenkins is just one of those completely underrated actors that most people kinda know, but confusedly turn to their partner to ask: What was he in again? Well, let me tell you this: As soon as you read his name on a poster, go and see the film! Jenkins has an understated style of acting which can be threatening, subdued, condescending, kind, dumb, pitiful, pathetic, empowering, all conveyed with the minutest twitch in facial muscles. Here then, he plays a middleman between Cogan and the top guys. His rhetoric wouldn't be out of place in a boardroom meeting, which renders the actions discussed even more disconcerting. As friendly and average as Cogan and Driver appear in their dealings, the last scene reveals them as the ruthless and cynic bastards that they are as a direct result of our living in times of extreme individualism. I mean, what did we expect?

Apart from these two outstanding performances, James Gandolfini makes a cringe-worthy (the character, not the performance) appearance as the washed-up Mickey. It sometimes seems as if Gandolfini acts with his eye-lids solely and here they're almost dropping to the floor which gives him the look of a beaten puppy that can snap at the same time as you try to pet it.

Then there's Scoot MacNairy and Ben Mendelson as the downbeats Frankie and Russell. Both of them ooze shadiness and Mendelson's sweaty, unwashed appearance just makes you vividly imagine what he must smell like and it really does make your stomach churn. MacNairy's character is a long way off from the clever US government employee in Argo as he physically turns into this nervous, weasely guy who knows he is losing control. One of the best scenes of the film definitely has to be the 'conversation' Frankie and a very stoned Russell have, in which Russell keeps drifting off and Frankie gets more and more panicky, realising that Russell just signed their death sentence. Those two young actors certainly have the most visceral and physical performances of the film, in which their body language tells you just as much about their disenfranchised status as their actions.

Even Ray Liotta is surprisingly good as Markie 'the scapegoat' Trattman, even though I have to say I am not a big fan of his. However, he does hold up well and especially his performance in the beating scene stands out as one of the best in his career.

This world is indeed the bleakness of a senseless noir universe in which motive plays no role and sense is a futile concept. Once the events are initiated by a stupid idea, there's no end to the spiralling into a mindless violence. This world is stifling and arbitrary, there is little or no hope and in this, the atmosphere of the film can almost be called coen-esque. No wonder then that the finishing monologue by Pitt bears an uncanny resemblance to the opening monologue of the Visser character in Blood Simple: In America, respectively Texas for Visser, you're on your own. This is the underside of the American pursuit of freedom and personal gain, not so much the liberty of the pioneer spirit as the pettiness of the criminal mind and the corruption of political acting.

Dominik is known for his neat, tight mise-en-scene and this film is no different. The colour scheme is one of subdued greys and blues, with an iconography of rainy streets, urban warehouses, empty roads and a general atmosphere of hopelessness. I'm not selling it to you? The thing about Dominik's style is that it catches you by its serene roughness, yes, I know, that's an oxymoron, but I really can't explain it any better. There's beauty in these essentialist and ordered visuals. It's clean and unemotional which might or might not be your cup of tea, as a matter of fact, the whole film will divide the audience, that much can be seen coming. Following our current obsession with cultural similes, think HBO, more specifically The Sopranos, rather than Scorcese, with a little bit of Winding Refn thrown in visually for good measure. As it is, for me, this is one of the most surprising features of this season, cynical to the point of down right apocalyptic, beautifully subdued in which the visuals enhance the overall bleakness, cleverly written, well adapted and incredibly funny when it comes to the dialogue, even if the play with radio interviews and TV comments borders on the blunt sometimes. This is film noir in spirit, without the melodrama and theatrics and makes for the perfect anti-Christmas viewing.

'End of Watch'

David Ayer is by far no stranger to cop fiction, not with the likes of Training Day and Street Kings under his belt. In End of Watch he goes about things differently though. This is no portrayal of police corruption reaching to the highest level in the force, but a depiction of two street cops and the friendship that binds them together. Officer Taylor and Officer Zavala are partners in South Central , one of the roughest neighbourhood in LA and that is saying something. They patrol these ganglands on a day-to-day basis and their experiences range from domestic disputes to finding bodies, guns and drugs. More often than not they get shot at before the day is over.

When Taylor has detective aspirations and decides to investigate beyond his duty call, things start to get out of hand as the two manage to get on the radar of the South Central's Mexican drug cartel, run by a gentleman with the very telling name 'Big Evil'.

Presumably to add to the authenticity, Ayer lets his characters shoot half the movie. Taylor, under the pretext of filming for a college application project, films most of the proceedings on their watch. The gang members film their drive-bys and some of the footage is captured by the cameras on the police officer's uniforms. As a result of this found footage aesthetics, the visuals remain shaky, unstable, often disconcerting and fragmented, mimicking the general confusion of these sometimes extreme situations the two cops find themselves in. Ayer throws the spectator in the thick of things, peeping around hallway corners, never knowing what might expect one on the other side. It's a video game gimmick, but it does work as it adds to the nerve-racking intensity of this job in which one might very well get killed. At the same time, the imagery works by contrast, the wide sun-drenched LA streets contend with the crammed, claustrophobic interiors in a set-up in which houses and homes become crime scenes. The gritty feel of the hand-held camera might not necessarily be the most original directorial choice, the visual feel of the film does however help underline the emotional background that comes with the police territory.

The first half of the film thus consists of these images captured by the characters themselves and it is only in the second act of the film that a further perspective becomes clearly noticeable and thus somewhat distracting. This third camera, neither handled by either of the cops nor by the criminals introduces questions of authorship as it is never clear who is wielding the device. It's the intrusion of an outsider to the diegetic universe which results in a spectatorial disruption and opens this closed world of extreme realism to one of fictional drama, a transgression which does not sit well. As the visuals remind of a reality TV cop shows so popular in the US of the 90's, this third camera bears reference to the presence of an outsider to the LAPD, a TV person recording events for entertainment thus putting in question the very authenticity of the latter.

These are, however, only minor hiccups which do not hinder the greater purpose of the film. If you're looking for an action-fuelled cop thriller, you won't get your money's worth with this one. End of Watch is a character study, a Bildungsroman so to speak, more interested in how the average cop thinks, feels and often justifies in order to handle this job and the constant pressure and risk-taking. These cops legitimise each other and affirm each others choices and action. Only in living this existence as police officer rather than seeing it as a mere job, can these characters make sense of the horrors they see and deeds they commit in the name of the law. It thus comes as no wonder that the characters of the wives seem to be nothing more than supporting roles in the bromance of the police partnership.

Taylor and Zavala are your quintessential 'boys will be boys' figures who spent their time between calls taking the piss out of each other and their respective ethnic backgrounds. This environment oozes Machismo no matter what the sex of either cop or gangster. The verbal 'Fuck' count goes through the roof, indeed, Fuck is used as verb, noun, adjective, substitute...it might be authentic, but most of the characters just sound incredibly stupid and the whole respect through violence goes back to a primitivism one would have hoped society as such had passed beyond. I heard the pubescent boys behind me whisper : Fuck Yeah! when Zavala beats Mr Tre up, who sees the beating as a mark of respect and thus Zavala with the soul of an original gangster. It's not the authenticity of this world I question, it's the depiction of this attitude as something to be aspired to. Sometimes the film sits within the uncomfortable likeness to a recruitment video for the LAPD. In fact it hits the tone of adolescence perfectly with its black and white virtues of honesty, honour, male friendship, the making sense of an incomprehensible world and the unquestionable integrity of the rules of the street.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena both deliver straight forward and honest performances, but where they excel is in the depiction of their friendship. The banter and conversations they hold feel incredibly natural to the point of seeming improvised. Without question these characters represent the very core of the film and neither their performance nor the character development can be faulted. All the while they present the red herring of the plot. The structure of the film tends to be categorized into episodic sequences rather than representing a homogeneous whole again tying in with the cop show concept. Ayer takes his time, there seem to be no clearly defined goals and aims to this narrative, rather the film is an observation and description, accompanying the characters for a certain amount of time before releasing them back to their lives. This, of course, never means that there are no action scenes, violence or car chases, in short any typical iconography we've come to associate with cop movies, but they are not of the first priority.

The banal day-to-day conversations in the car, the private glimpses into the lives of these cops is what makes the film well worth seeing and raises it from a mental wank for the pre-adolescent to a strong realist drama which despite of a few hiccups manages to make good on its promises.

'Argo'

Ben Affleck's Argo takes us back to 1979, more precisely to the Iranian revolution, the overthrow of the shah and the consequential taking hostage of the body of staff of the American embassy in Tehran. Out of these, six manage to escape and seek refuge in the house of the Canadian ambassador and his wife.

Meanwhile, in the US, authorities are helpless as to how to, not only free the hostages, but furthermore get those six out of the country with Iranian revolutionaries scanning every corner of the streets for Americans. A battle against time ensues and CIA agent Tony Mendez is enlisted as the top go-to-extrication-guy.

After some ludicrous suggestions as to how to get them out, ranging from posing as teachers when all the schools have been closed by the Ayatollah, to getting them bikes to cycle a mere 300 miles, Merndez comes up with 'the best of the bad ideas'. Based on the simple question: Who's crazy and self-indulgent enough to travel to a country in the throes of a revolution? Only one answer presents itself: Hollywood. A plan is born. Mendez sets up a a fake movie, complete with producer and film production office, in order for the six refugees to pose as a Canadian film crew (presumably because Canadians are more likeable, even in the Middle East, note, however, how the production itself is still from Hollywood). Mendez convinces the Iranian authorities that they're looking to shoot a ludicrous Science Fiction film called 'Argo' in the Iranian desert and mountains.

Based on true events as related by Tony Mendez himself in a magazine feature, Argo presents a solid, unflashy portrayal of the exfil mission, even if the real Mendez still found Affleck's take on the events to be slightly over-dramatic, but that's Hollywood for you. The feel of the film is one of 70's crime thriller, however, not in a aesthetically self-indulgent manner, but authentically so, as if one was watching a film from the 70's rather than watching a post-modern homage to the 70's, if you get my drift. The iconography is one of dirty beige and greys, smoky without being glamorous. Think Tesco on a Monday night in 1978, tinned baked beans and yellow moustaches rather than Sean Connery having a fondue in Aspen, on New Year's Day, with a blonde, playing the flute, in a red jump suit...atmospherically speaking, of course.

Anyway, Affleck plays Mendez himself, he seems to be attracted to the 'decent guy' variety, world-weary and melancholic, but with an ever-so-firm belief in what is right. There's a whiff of the self-righteous about him, but the performance is beautifully understated and humanly grounded. Affleck manages to infuse the character with some real depth, a character which otherwise might have been in great danger of succumbing to yet another vessel for patriotic exclamations and unequivocal motivations. There's a few of those what I like to call 'Oh, Come On!' moments, as when Mendez decides to give his real name and history to two of the six embassy employees in order to convince them to escape with the rest of them. Really? What agent would risk it? And couldn't he have made up a fake 'real' name and history? Apart from these minor motivational hiccups, every character is well drawn, especially for the limited space every figure is granted. I was especially impressed by Scoot McNairy whose performance is of one much older than his actual age.

The atmosphere is tense and decidedly level-headed, at times even claustrophobic. Enter the counter balance: The Hollywood connection. It is an absolute delight to watch John Goodman and Alan Arkin play off each other, a bit like watching a game of table tennis. Here's to comic relief. Affleck even allows a few stabs at himself in, for example, having Arkin declare that 'You could teach a rhesus monkey to direct a film in a day'. At the same time, even if they're cynic about the Hollywood industry or poke fun at the business, it is done with an affectionate regard of one who belongs to the inner circle. As if to say: Look: In Hollywood we're big enough to laugh at ourselves, Haw, haw, haw. Both Goodman and Arkin play the Hollywood types with obvious glee, only to become serious in times of national crisis as if to show that, in the end, they're Americans first and Hollywoodians second. Nevertheless these Hollywood sequences are well integrated within the overall structure and save the film from being overly matter-of-fact and pronounced.

The Iranian revolutionaries coincide with the Hollywood stereotype of the dirty, loud, fanatic, uncultured Middle Eastern. The only redeeming Iranian character is the housemaid of the Canadian ambassador. Now, it is always tricky to portray an anti-Western revolutionary from a Western perspective, but one has to ask: Was the Iranian people in its entirety exactly on the same page as the revolutionaries taking the hostages in the embassy, or might there be the slight possibility that not the entire Iran is of a fundamentalist frame of mind? I am not attacking Affleck as he does a decent job of an immensely difficult portrayal, nevertheless I would have welcomed an introduction of some representatives of the Iranian people within the overall plot structure as well as the terror this regime instilled within the natives.

With the Bond franchise well and alive and the latest instalment in the cinemas at the same time as Argo, it proves almost impossible not to draw parallels, or rather state differences. I have to say, Bond does feel awfully gimmicky after Mendez' self-effacing realism. One does tend to forget that the highest virtue of an agent is invisibility, not flashy cockiness. As such, Mendez is not the guy to get the girls, no, he's average Joe on the verge of a divorce, although, as a concession to film aesthetics, with slightly better abs.

The overall feel of the film is one of taking its audience seriously, which is a relief. Affleck manages to tell a rather unbelievable series of events in a calm and surprisingly uncomplicated manner, without ever descending into banality. It does not bare thinking about what someone like Emmerich would have made of this script. All the while, one of the most distinguishing features of the film, and indeed, Affleck as a film-maker, is the playful handling of the suspense element. Both in 'The Town' and his first feature 'Gone Baby Gone', Affleck is most skilful in having his audience sit on the edge of their seat. Most of the nail-biting tension is induced by crafty editing and the solid sobriety of the mise-en-scène, which makes the imagery ever more powerful. The extrication scene at the end will have your stomach in a knot, that I promise you and the only slight reproach I have is that Affleck never left it there. In all his previous films as well as this one, one major hindrance to truly great work crystallises: namely the inability to end his film at the right time and on the right tone. As such, the end drags on for too long as if Affleck is reluctant to let his characters go and also to 'explain' what the film wanted to 'say' in the first place. This is a real shame, as the spectator was treated with obvious respect to his/her own capabilities throughout the text, only to be slightly patronised at the end. Also the tone descends from one of intelligent commentary to one of emotional patriotism. Still, even the last ten minutes cannot spoil the experience of an affecting and astute thriller, skilfully handled and firmly setting Affleck on the plan of politically motivated and intelligent film-making. (Yes, yes, mention of Clooney dutifully included right here, who, by the way, functioned as executive producer on this film. Now go away and don't bore me!)

Attention to detail, dark humour, grown-up plot and character treatment, understated realism, simple thus believable plot structure, 70's thriller iconography, and nail-biting suspense, make Argo one of the unexpected highlights of the autumn releases.