Killing Them Softly and the 2008 Financial Crisis
10 May 2023
TONY SOPRANO: Sil, break it down for them. What two businesses have traditionally been recession proof since time immemorial?
SILVIO DANTE: Certain aspects of show business...and our thing.
- The Sopranos, S4E1
The “gangster movie” is cited by the American Film Institute as one of the medium’s ten classic genres. Most gangster movies depict the underground criminal economy of racketeering, bootlegging, and drug dealing as distinct and mostly insulated from the mainstream economy’s tumultuous peaks and valleys. In Killing Them Softly, director Andrew Dominik presents the two worlds as inextricable. In post-Katrina New Orleans, the mob has been reduced to a few sad, brutal, dirty, despicable men. These are not charming wiseguys like Tony Soprano or Henry Hill (actors of both characters, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta, are featured in the film). Because of the economic immiseration caused by a combination of Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession, these gangsters have no time for wives and families, Sunday dinner with plates of manicotti and glasses of red wine. The precarity of the situation has forced these men to become animals, incapable of any feelings other than their instinctual drives toward sex, violence, and money, or the temporary security they may provide. Only the suave hitman Jackie, through exceptional skill at his trade, is afforded the luxury of emotion. He is the only character carrying the unfortunate burden of empathy, forced to kill his victims “softly,” and set in stark contrast to the psychopathic men who surround him. The film is a deconstruction of the classic gangster genre and a critique of the lifestyle it mythologizes. Similarly, Dominik uses the film as an allegory of the 2008 financial crisis to deconstruct the myths told of late capitalism and the American Dream.
Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, Killing Them Softly is based on the 1974 crime novel by George V. Higgins, Cogan’s Trade. The film follows Dominik’s 2007 epic revisionist Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, similarly starring and produced by Brad Pitt. Set in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 financial crisis, Killing Them Softly follows Brad Pitt’s Jackie, a skilled hitman hired to clean up a mess of criminal activity. Johnny “Squirrel” Amato (Vincent Curatola) hires two young criminals, Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) to rob a mafia poker game run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). Since he has already admitted to robbing his own game once, Squirrel figures that the robbery will be immediately pinned on Markie, allowing him and his associates to get off scot-free. Despite Frankie and Russell’s apparent ineptitude, the robbery goes according to plan, and the poker game is temporarily shut down. The mob bosses, represented only by the Driver (Richard Jenkins), are angry and seeking retribution, since “people are losing money.” While they know it is unlikely Markie is stupid enough to rob his own game twice, the Driver hires Jackie to kill him anyway in order to make an example and quell unease while the games get back up and running. Jackie carries out the hit on Markie, and after being informed by an associate of Russell’s, figures out the true culprits. Jackie tells the Driver he can’t kill Squirrel, since the two know each other – they hire Mickey (James Gandolfini), a washed-up hitman from New York, to complete the hit. Mickey spends a few days indulging in alcohol and prostitutes, and it becomes clear to Jackie that the once-respected hitman will be unable to do the job. He sets Mickey up to be arrested and decides to kill Squirrel himself. After finding him in a local bar, Jackie convinces Frankie to give up information on Squirrel’s whereabouts in exchange for his life, and further convinces Frankie to join him on the hit. After killing Squirrel, the two drive for several hours before Jackie betrays Frankie, killing him in an empty parking garage and thus tying up the final loose end. Jackie convenes with the Driver at another bar, and, after a monologue about the state of America, demands to be paid.
While the original book is set in 1974, Dominik updated the film to 2008 because he felt the themes were well-suited to fit the global financial crisis of the time. This financial crisis eventually developed into the Great Recession, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The causes of the crisis are complex, but a basic understanding significantly illuminates Dominik’s intention with the film. The crisis first began with the bursting of the American subprime mortgage market bubble in 2007. Because 49% of the U.S. banking system was backed by mortgage-based assets at the time, this crash had a predictably profound effect on the economy. Additionally, a global credit crisis arose from a multitude of (often criminal) manipulations of a wide range of financial practices and processes. 2008 was also the year that Barack Obama was elected president on a platform touting promises of hope and change. The opening of the film cuts between audio of an Obama campaign speech and footage of Scoot McNairy’s Frankie walking the destitute, abandoned streets of New Orleans. In a later scene, the Driver (Richard Jenkins) and Jackie (Brad Pitt) sit in a car while a radio news program discusses the economic crisis. These scenes immediately situate the film historically and highlight how a criminal economy incapacitated by previous failures to regulate, failures that led higher-ups to try to restore confidence in the system, reflect events of 2008. The scheme cooked up by Johnny “Squirrel” Amato, Frankie, and Russell to benefit from this lack of regulation becomes an allegory for the events that led to the banking crisis. Johnny appears not to have complete faith in Frankie and Russell’s ability to get away with robbing the card game, but feels the reward outweighs the risk, making these three comparable to certain overly-confident members of the banking sector. Such bankers convinced less financially secure clients to accept “liar loans” that they had no real hope of repaying, so the bankers could then earn high commissions on the sales.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the film’s allegory is the killing of Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). Although Markie is innocent, his previous transgression prompts Jackie to argue that his murder is necessary for restoring trust in the illegal gambling ring. As the Driver puts it, Markie’s death is important for “the public angle.” Innocence and guilt are secondary to consumer trust, much in the same way that public perception of restored confidence in the banking system is deemed more important than the reality of any change to systemic issues. Other characters encourage a similar allegorical reading of the film. The bureaucratic indecisiveness and constant cost-benefit analysis performed by the Driver suggest the measures put in place by the American government to try and regulate the banks after the economic crisis. The washed-up, out-of-town hitman Mickey (James Gandolfini), is first described as a respected professional killer. He later proves to be a complete liability due to his alcoholism and sex drive. The largest bankruptcy in U.S. history occurred in September of 2008 when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Prior to this, Lehman Brothers was one of the largest and most highly respected banks in the world. Like the Lehman Brothers, Mickey was once a dependable hire, but by his own making, has fallen from grace and been rendered useless.
The film is interestingly situated in a city not traditionally associated with the gangster genre. While most mob media are based in the greater-New York City area, with occasional diversions out West to Las Vegas (Casino, parts of The Godfather), Killing Them Softly is set in New Orleans. The film features no charming southern accents a la A Streetcar Named Desire or JFK, and none of the city’s famously rich cultural heritage. The only immigrant is an Australian who can’t wait to get to Florida, and the only person of color is a nameless prostitute (she’s the only woman, too). So why has Dominik chosen New Orleans?
In August of 2005, New Orleans was struck by a Category 5 hurricane that resulted in 1,392 deaths and up to $145.5 billion worth of damage, making it the most costly tropical cyclone of all time and the most deadly American hurricane since 1928. In addition to damage to physical property in the city, Katrina also contributed to the interruption of the oil supply (leading to global increases in price) and exports of commodities such as cotton. The region struck by Katrina was already one of the poorest in the United States with one of the highest unemployment rates, and after the storm, nearly everyone in New Orleans was left unemployed. Further, without any economic activity, local governments could not raise any revenue from taxes. A number of government failures are credited with contributing to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Firstly, the evacuation process: roughly a quarter of New Orleans households were without private mobility at the time of the hurricane. Despite this, the mandatory evacuation ordered by Governor Kathleen Blanco on August 27 included no specific arrangements for New Orleans’ homeless, poor, sick, or elderly. Consequently, most of those abandoned in the city during the storm were members of these marginalized communities. The initial stock of supplies provided by the government was supposed to be enough food and water to feed 15,000 citizens for 3 days (the expected wait time for FEMA to be deployed in force). This stock was depleted far quicker than anticipated, due to the failed evacuation that caused far greater numbers of citizens seeking refuge and supplies. The federal government’s response was strongly criticized by state officials as slow and inadequate. President Bush did not return to Washington from his vacation in Texas for more than a day after the hurricane struck the city, while Vice President Cheney personally ordered crews working on restoring power to local hospitals to divert their efforts to the Colonial Pipeline. Hurricane Katrina was one of the first major tests of the newly established Department of Homeland Security, and many questions were asked about who had jurisdictional authority over the response to the disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was heavily criticized after the storm for its slow response and failure to effectively coordinate with other federal agencies, local officials, and relief organizations. FEMA Director Michael Brown was among the chief targets of criticism. Private contractors were hired for all manner of duties, from maintaining security to collecting bodies. While these are only a small handful of the myriad failures, Hurricane Katrina is widely seen as a disaster on almost every level of government – local, state, and federal.
Andrew Dominik uses New Orleans to draw a parallel between the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and their response to the 2008 financial crisis. The language of economics often evokes images of organic processes – “cycles,” “growth,” the “health” of the economy. Financial crises are often discussed in the same way natural disasters are – as naturally-occuring, immutable, unavoidable events that have always existed and always will. While that may be true to some small degree, the federal government does have a significant ability to intervene both preemptively and after the fact. The austere political-economic agenda which contributed to a failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina are the same cause of the deregulation that led to the 2008 financial crisis. Dominik is using this unique temporal-spatial setting to claim the two events are not just historical parallels, but a historical convergence. New Orleans is also a city widely known as a place of color, joy, celebration – one of its biggest claims to fame is the annual Mardi Gras festival. Demographically, it is also a uniquely American city, a melting pot of Spanish, Creole, and Cajun descendants, with significant communities of Hondurans, Italians, and Vietnamese. The film does not indulge in any of the city’s cultural richness. No food, no music, not even a view of the Gulf. Instead, the film focuses on the city’s beastly climate. The mood is hot and oppressive, and every character seems to be permanently covered in a layer of perspiration. This dreary depiction of the city stresses the total economic transformation that New Orleans has undergone by 2008, and acts as a representative of cities all over the country.
In casting Killing Them Softly, Dominik selected a number of actors best-known for their portrayals of mobsters in other media: Ray Liotta (Henry Hill in Goodfellas) plays Markie Trattman, James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano in the Sopranos) plays Mickey, while Vincent Curatola and Max Cassella (Johnny Sack and Benny Fazio of The Sopranos) play Johnny “Squirrel” Amato and Barry Caprio, respectively. While it is true that historically, the casts of mob films are often filled out from a relatively small batch of New York-based actors with significant overlap, there is more than just coincidence at play here. In his critique and deconstruction of the gangster genre, Dominik is making a deliberate attempt to remind audiences of these iconic roles. These are not Tony Sirico (Goodfellas, The Sopranos) and David Proval (Mean Streets, The Sopranos) doing supporting bit parts – Tony Soprano and Henry Hill are two of the most recognizable roles in two of the most celebrated pieces of American media ever, let alone the gangster genre. When audiences see Ray Liotta’s Markie Trattman, they are reminded of the charming, young, well-dressed Irish associate from Goodfellas. Markie’s dismal situation as an older associate living in a mobile home is highlighted that much more by this contrast. Further, Gandolfini’s Mickey appears as a bizarro-world Tony Soprano. The once-respected, now washed-up, hitman shares Tony’s penchant for alcohol and prostitutes, and is similarly struggling in his marriage. He is unkempt and poorly-dressed, bad at his job, and ultimately ends up in the hands of law enforcement. Mickey and Markie seem less like new characters in an entirely different world than The Sopranos or Goodfellas, and more like the characters we already know, but in an alternate reality – one in which the mob was not sheltered from the ebbs and flows of the economy, were not as insulated as Steven Van Zandt’s Silvio Dante would have his crew believe. By casting these notorious fictional gangsters, Dominik stresses the mob’s exceptional fall from grace, and underscores the economic decline of America at large during the financial crisis. If Tony Soprano isn’t safe from the Great Recession, who is? Meanwhile, the two gangsters in the least precarious positions in the film are not typically associated with the genre – Brad Pitt as Jackie and Richard Jenkins as the Driver. The colluding pair lack the classic Italian-American accents, though Jackie retains some of the swagger. This change of pace represents a changing-of-the-guard – guys like Mickey and Markie are on the way out in the midst of such economic tumult, to be replaced by men of either exceptional skill (Jackie) or with the ability to navigate the world of the anonymous bosses’ “total corporate mentality,” (the Driver).
Dominik further subverts expectations of a gangster flick on an aesthetic level. The film completely lacks the genre’s typically glamorous display of wealth. The mobsters in Killing Them Softly are not particularly well-dressed or groomed, and lack all the charm of the traditional wiseguy. A few of the criminals make disturbing comments about women or minorities, or about their stints in prison. There is virtually no womanizing – Mickey berates a prostitute (Linda Wahington), the only woman with a speaking role in the film, and Johnny Amato’s date appears in the dark, distant background of a single scene. These women are decidedly not The Godfather’s Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) or Goodfellas’ Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco). The film also lacks both the epic Italian scores of films like The Godfather and Once Upon A Time in America, and the classic rock soundtracks of Goodfellas or The Sopranos. Instead, almost any time a character is driving in a car or sitting at a bar, the radio or television is playing news coverage of the presidential election or the economic crisis. These men are no less materialistic or sex-crazed, and no more politically-interested than the stereotypical mobster. But the brutal film constantly withholds these minor aesthetic pleasures, emphasizing the totalizing effect of their precarious economic position. These men have no time for wives or Sunday dinners or nice suits. They are too busy trying to survive.
In the film’s final scene, Jackie meets up with the Driver at a bar after completing the three hits. The Driver, again with his constant penny-pinching, offers Jackie less than he expects to be paid. The pair notice now-President-elect Barack Obama giving his victory speech on the television. Jackie responds angrily: “This guy wants to tell me we're living in a community? 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 fucking pay me." The monologue in the final minute of Killing Them Softly summarizes Dominik’s thesis maybe a little too well. In using and subverting the classically American gangster genre, Dominik criticizes the myth it usually tells about the country’s moral priorities. To Dominik, organized crime represents capitalism in its most brutal form, when profit is placed above all else, including human life. These criminal men are morally-bankrupt, disgusting, and despicable, but not much more than the ones who created this situation in the first place.