2019 Top Ten List #3 Marriage Story

Director Noah Baumbach

MARRIAGE STORY            A                    

USA  (136 mi)  2019  d:  Noah Baumbach

Coming full circle in his career, while The Squid and the Whale (2005) is about a nasty divorce (without lawyers) between two literary parents largely seen through the children’s perspective, as the parental anger is internalized through the kids, returning to familiar territory more than a decade later, featuring the tug and pull on a single child during a contentious divorce, largely seen through the eyes of a show business couple splitting up on opposite coasts, where each film is a devastating emotional train wreck, though this may be Baumbach’s most mature work to date, largely losing the satiric comic humor, which may work as a defense mechanism, finally allowing the excruciating drama to breathe and unfold naturally.  In each film, the director speaks from experience, having endured a particularly contentious divorce between his literary parents as a child, and then experiencing it again firsthand during his 2013 divorce with actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.  Both films are emotionally impactful and career defining, with the earlier film favoring brief comic vignettes that stand out for their incisively expressed anguish and pain, while this later film is an hour longer, administering surges of corrosively exploding disagreements that send shock waves into the audience, as otherwise likeable people become combatants in a theatrically staged court process that feels absurdly designed to humiliate all parties concerned, leaving horrific carnage in its wake, which is supposedly in the best interests of the children.  Somehow, someway, people are supposed to recover from these traumatizing events and become reasonable people who are still capable of instilling love for their mutual children while working out the shared responsibilities of raising them from different homes.  Paying tribute to Ingmar Bergman’s epic SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (1973), though never taking sides, what’s uniquely different about this film is the freedom to explore both distinctly different personalities as they themselves are realizing the full extent of what is taking place internally, as no one is more surprised by the changing dynamics than they are, having been living comfortably under one roof, both successful in their own careers, happily combining their forces onstage, becoming part of the existing theater scene in New York.  Baumbach has always been known as an exquisitely gifted writer, as his performance-generated films accentuate a kind of free-flowing dialogue that is both smart and humorous at the same time, finding it easy to personally internalize his experiences cinematically, much like Woody Allen did early in his career when his films were immersed in the cultural spotlight of New York City, developing a kind of East coast chic, yet SQUID was the benchmark of his talents until this film, which is unlike anything else he’s ever done, more open, more accessible, yet emotionally abrasive, where it’s hard not to feel the open vein of heartbreak when you realize love often isn’t enough.           

Ostensibly the story of two charismatically appealing people, both providing the performance of their careers, Charlie (Adam Driver), an up and coming avant-garde theater director in New York who throws everything he makes back into his theater, while his wife, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), is the leading lady who stars in all his productions, where their lives revolve around each new play, consumed by the inherent possibilities of new expressions.  Together they have an adored 8-year old son Henry (Azhy Robertson), where the beauty of their marriage is that they’re all intrinsically attuned to one another, where one is an extension of the other, even down to the tiniest details, both openly generous, where there’s an unspoken language for married couples, who somehow know what the other is thinking or what they need and instantly provides it without so much of a thought, as it all happens so easily, becoming second nature to them.  The film opens with two meticulously detailed and amazingly coherent letters revealing everything they like about the other person, which defines them in adoringly lovable ways, exploring everything that’s uniquely different about them, while exposing their innate humanity, as this is the core foundation of their love.  It’s such a beautiful way to start a film, immediately pulling the audience into their inner wavelengths, finding something appealing about them both.  Without question they work well together, yet suddenly they’re in the offices of a marriage counselor, expected to read their prepared letters, but a fuming Nicole refuses, storming out in protest, finding it a complete waste of time.  Both decide they don’t want lawyers, thinking they can figure it out themselves.  As if in response, she decides to take a role in a television pilot that may or may not get picked up, moving to West Hollywood with Henry, living with her unhinged showbiz mother (Julie Hagerty) and socially awkward sister (Merritt Wever), exploring what her career might be like without Charlie.  While it’s viewed as a temporary, knee-jerk response, it literally opens the door to a brand new world for Nicole, something she always turned down before in favor of working with her husband, feeling she may have sacrificed her own career for his, but is now open to new opportunities.  Both she and Henry blossom in their new environment, while Charlie remains engrossed in his theater company, as his play is moving to Broadway, completely unaware of her emotional transformation, which is unleashed in a monologue of expurgated fury, where the intensity of her built-up anger surprises even her, unleashed in the offices of a hyper-focused divorce attorney, Nora (Laura Dern), friendly to a fault, but specializing in going for the jugular, offering her own blistering speech on the religiously entrenched societal devaluation of motherhood.  When Charlie comes to visit announcing that he’s won a “genius” MacArthur Fellowship grant, a prestigious award that comes with a sizable monetary stipend that can help fund his theater project, he’s completely blindsided by being served divorce papers (which was family rehearsed), while also urged to find a hotel, as he can’t stay with Nicole.  Welcome to life in LA.        

What follows is a descent into the monstrous hell of divorce attorneys, like a Kafkaesque house of pain that makes no sense, as Charlie typically avoids all lawyerly repercussions while attempting to stage his play, forced at the last minute to respond in court or lose custody rights, so he searches desperately for a lawyer, torn between tough guy Ray Liotta who basically extorts all future earnings (including his grant), charging the astronomical amount of $950/hour, and nice guy Alan Alda, a grandfatherly type who empathizes with his pain, offers hugs, charges considerably less, but is easily manipulated in the hearings, allowing Nora to ride roughshod over them.  Going through a series of humiliations and disappointments, having to fly back and forth between coasts, Charlie is up against it, as his world is simply collapsing all around him, living an agonizing life of deep turmoil, where every gesture is met with a resounding slam of the door.  Even Henry turns against him, as he’s enrolled in school, has a bunch of new friends, where he’s enjoying himself more in the sunshine, surrounded by new opportunities, while Dad is in desperate straits, trying to hold on, but losing every step of the way, advised to establish residence in Los Angeles if he wants a chance of joint custody, but his life there is a dreary emptiness, a sham of an existence, kept away from his work which is collapsing without him, yet it’s his only chance to hold onto his son.  Meanwhile, Nicole’s life is flourishing, coming out from under her husband’s shadow, where her talent is recognized, realizing her own hopes and dreams, as her pilot is picked up, and she’s even been offered the chance to direct, where she’s part of the Hollywood crowd now, hanging out at posh parties with all the beautiful people.  However the day of reckoning arises, their ultimate day in court, with Charlie backed into a corner, forced to go with Mr. Big Bucks, Ray Liotta as his lawyer, where the back and forth resembles a street fight, each undermining the other with savage attacks of character, where it’s pure histrionics, like a theater performance of who can inflict the most damage, both ultimately leveled by heinously exaggerated accusations.  It’s a pathetic display that leaves both feeling humbled and utterly ashamed afterwards, attempting some reconciliation in Charlie’s empty apartment, but it deteriorates into a blitzkrieg of frayed emotions, where all the innermost fears and perpetual anxieties come streaming out in a slugfest for the ages, leaving both devastated and emotionally exhausted afterwards, emptying themselves of all nagging resentments, perhaps free to finally let go.  Subjected to a near surreal visit by a court appointed observer that ends in an unmitigated disaster, Baumbach magnificently pivots into two Stephen Sondheim songs from Company wonderfully getting the elevated exposure they deserve, capturing the richness and emotion of the lyrics while transforming them into new contexts, ambitiously interweaving them into the refreshingly new state of mind of each character, cleverly altering the meaning in marvelously inventive sequences.  Nicole showcases her natural charisma singing You Could Drive a Person Crazy with her mother and sister in an upbeat Andrews Sisters-style rendition at a large party gathering with friends, now gloriously happy, in harmony with her surroundings and the picture of success, while Charlie, back in New York in a piano bar surrounded by his theater troupe breaks out into Being Alive, almost in jest at first, but then diving in full throttle, with the words just gushing out, literally pouring out his heart and soul, becoming a spontaneous stream-of-conscience revelation, shot in one take, revealing an exposed, vulnerable side, finally opening up again, reconnecting to his world, yet it’s done with such an instinctual theatrical flair, feeling so effortless and natural.  Watching them process what they value the most, authentic performances, reveals a resuscitation of what’s so essential to them both as artists, bookending that marvelously inventive reading of the letters at the opening, coming full turn, both finally allowed to breathe again.       

The Iceman

Barbara and Richard Kuklinski as teenagers

 









Richard Kuklinski

THE ICEMAN            B   
USA  (105 mi)  2012  d:  Ariel Vromen            Official site 

Beginning in the spring of 1954, Kuklinski began prowling Hell’s Kitchen in a search of victims. He came to Manhattan numerous times over the ensuing weeks and months and killed people, always men, never a female, he says, always someone who rubbed him the wrong way, for some imagined or extremely slight reason. He shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned men to death. He left some where they dropped. He dumped some into the nearby Hudson River. Murder, for Richard, became sport. The New York police came to believe that the bums were attacking and killing one another, never suspecting that a full fledged serial killer from New Jersey was coming over to Manhattan's West Side for the purpose of killing people, to practice and perfect murder. Richard made the West Side of Manhattan a kind of lab for murder, a school, he says. 

—Philip Carlo, author of The Iceman, Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, 2006

While HBO already aired The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer in 1992, a documentary of two interviews a decade apart of Richard Kuklinski, a notorious mob enforcer for the Gambino crime family, alleging he killed somewhere between 100 and 250 people, there are also several books written on the subject, Philip Carlo’s The Iceman, Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, a rambling, non-investigative account that reveals as much truth as fiction, and the 1993 book upon which this film is based, Anthony Bruno's The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer.  Bruno combines the stories of the notorious killer, a former altar boy who is also the seriously abused son of a brutal, alcoholic, and child-murdering (killing Richard’s older brother Florian) father in Hackensack, New Jersey, and the ATF agent Dominick Polifrone, a cop who grew up with the same mobsters in Hackensack, but posed as a mobster in a risky undercover assignment wearing a wire of Kuklinski attempting to buy cyanide.  The book captures the tension of the ATF agent fearing he would be the next target, as Kuklinski’s reputation for cold-blooded efficiency intimidated even the crime families, while the film is less interested in any police involvement, preferring an exposé on the double life of Kuklinski, played by Michael Shannon, a shadowy figure who heartlessly kills with ease using a variety of methods including derringers, shotguns, knives, poison, ice picks, tire irons, baseball bats, bombs, along with his bare hands while also maintaining a normal family life as a husband and doting father of two daughters in suburban New Jersey.  To them, he was actively involved in the legitimate business of currency exchanges and finance, seen as a respectable man in the community, never giving them reason to suspect otherwise, though in real life Kuklinski was an enormous hulk of a man who regularly beat his wife.  Still, up until the moment of his arrest, they inexplicably remained completely in the dark about what he did for a living.  

Kuklinski lies when he meets his wife Deborah (Winona Ryder) in the mid 60’s, amusingly telling her he dubs Disney films for a living when he’s really duplicating porn films, and while he’s not yet connected to the mob, he casually slices the throat of a poolroom hothead who casts dispersions on the reputation of his wife to be.  While this is the first murder shown in the film, it’s more likely that he’s killed a dozen men by then, many of them simply for sport, where he was a weird way of practicing various techniques on live subjects, just to see how they work.  But it’s the porn business controlled by organized crime that initially gets him involved, when mob boss Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta) pays him a visit on a sizeable debt owed and decides to have some fun at his expense, sticking a gun in his face and the guy doesn’t even flinch.  Showing cojones to a mob boss is not an insignificant thing.  When DeMeo points out a random bum on the street and orders him to kill him, Kuklinski, better known by now as The Pollack, displays such a natural ease that he instantly becomes Roy’s favorite enforcer, staging robberies, collecting debts, helping traffic illegal porn for DeMeo and the Gambino family until he eventually becomes their preferred killer for hire, known for his efficiency, as his executions are ruthlessly cold and quick.  DeMeo’s right hand man is interestingly played by David Schwimmer, supposedly a Jewish kid he picked up off the streets with furry eyebrows and a shaggy ponytail, where despite the hardened look he will always be overly anxious Ross Geller from the TV sitcom Friends (1994 – 2004), while DeMeo’s connection to the Gambino family is Robert Davi as Leonard Marks, whose pock-marked face has tough guy character written all over it.  The side characters are all excellent, where outside of Shannon’s smoldering performance, it’s Winona Ryder, making the most of a small part, who may be the biggest surprise, reminiscent of Faye Dunaway as the pampered and overly entitled mob wife in James Gray’s The Yards (1999).  

Perhaps the most chilling sequence in the film is a visit to Trenton Federal Prison where Kuklinski visits his younger brother Joey (older in reality) who raped and killed a 12-year old girl, the nearly unrecognizable Stephen Dorff from Somewhere (2010), where we gain insight into their collective child abuse, with older brother Richard always bearing the brunt of his father’s beatings.  Joey crudely reminds him that they’re no different, going ballistic when he hears him try to pass himself off as a family man, “You remember when you bashed that kid’s head in with a rock?” literally screaming at him when he tries to leave, “You’re no better than me, we’re screwed up in the head!”  While it is true, Kuklinski's daughters are devoted to their dad, Shannon is near brilliant as a complex individual who remains distant and aloof but capable of conveying softness at home, a subtle and nuanced work defined by physically remaining calm and still, almost inert, expressing himself with only a facial gesture, where his scenes together with Liotta are a sheer pleasure.  While the initial intrigue into Kuklinski’s duplicitous life is intriguing, carefully balancing his calculating professional brutality with an almost tender home life, it’s when the mob is forced to cut him loose that things start to go astray, as without them, he’s an uncontrolled loose cannon, where his emotional stability starts to unravel as well, veering towards interior psychological horror, where the guy is surrounded by an all-enveloping paranoia, believing everyone around him to be his enemy except his family, where he goes on a one-man crusade to extinguish them all.  While it’s never clear how this is supposed to protect the lives of his family, who seem ever more vulnerable and exposed, his actions only draw public attention to the mob, something they deplore.  

The film starts to deteriorate with his friendship and tutorial from another hired killer, Mr. Freezy (Chris Evans), a sleazy assassin whose cover is driving around in an ice-cream truck selling popsicles to children, both of them loners, teaching him some of the most unsavory aspects of the business, such as freezing their victims and chopping them up before disposing of various body parts, often placing them in the trunks of cars and having them compacted into scrap metal before shipping them off to Japan to make new cars.  Hard corps and gritty throughout, depicted with almost unwatchable graphic gore through the equally remorseless character of Freezy, the director is literally rubbing the audience’s noses in the overriding stench of killing and death.  The seamy story covers some 30-years, detectable only through vintage cars, changing hair styles, and some odd choices of music, where we hear ELO’s lushly orchestrated “Livin’ Thing” ELO- Livin' Thing - YouTube  (4:01) during a roller-skating outing of Kuklinski and his family and later we hear Blondie's "Heart of Glass" Blondie - Heart of Glass 1979 Video TopPop stereo widescreen (4:09) during an infamous disco scene where Kuklinski blows cyanide into a guy’s face on the dance floor, killing him instantly.  It was Freezy that introduced Kuklinski to cyanide, becoming his preferred method of choice, as he could use it in public and simply walk by his victim while pretending to sneeze, spraying his face with poison, where he didn’t even have to dispose of the body afterwards.  But it was also Kuklinski’s undoing, attempting to buy the hard-to-find, exotic poison from an undercover federal agent, ultimately betrayed at age 51 in 1986 by “the only man I didn't kill.”  While the body count feels exaggerated and grows out of control by the end, this barely hints at the real damage caused by this man, who reportedly started by killing neighborhood cats as a youth and said he committed his first murder at 14, after which he said he felt ‘empowered.’  

Note – While Shannon was the original pick, there were multiple last minute casting changes, including Chris Evans and Ray Liotta replacing James Franco (who later took a secondary role) and Benicio del Toro, while Maggie Gyllenhaal quit after announcing her second pregnancy, and was replaced by Wynona Ryder, who’s suddenly all grown up.

The Place Beyond the Pines

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES       B                

USA  (140 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  d:  Derek Cianfrance

This is a major improvement over his initial film, BLUE VALENTINE (2010), which despite major stars and critical accolades, and the potential to be so much more, felt overwritten, poorly directed, and badly edited, feeling more like a sketch of what it wanted to be, loosely improvised, never developing any real dramatic impact and ultimately failing to connect with the audience.  This is a peculiar follow-up piece, which at times resembles an overwrought literary melodrama, but continues to surprise by elongating the story, by going places few films ever dare to venture.  The epic nature and novelesque reach of the film is impressive, even when it often appears to be a trainwreck about to happen.  Like Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960), it’s a shock to see such a prominent character killed off so quickly, where initially the viewer tends to wrap things up in their heads, preparing for the inevitable finale, but it simply moves ahead in a completely different direction.  It plays out as if there were chapter headings, where the film is divided into separate biographical segments, but none match the intensity of the opening, featuring Ryan Gosling as daredevil motorcycle rider Luke Glanton, an over-the-edge carnival rider who continually has to get amped up before his daring performances before the public, entering a steel circular cage where three riders zig zag around a globe at full tilt, often defying gravity, as they circumnavigate their way through a blur of nonstop motion.  As he travels the circuit, he moves from town to town, never taking root, drifting aimlessly for years, where he runs into an old flame, Romina (Eva Mendes), but despite a few sparks, nothing materializes, as he’s leaving town the next day.  Through a few plot contrivances, he discovers she’s kept a secret, a young two-year old boy, claiming he was gone before she could ever tell him.  For some inexplicable reason, Luke’s life, which has no boundaries or even definition, suddenly develops a focus around this little boy, as he wants to be a part of his life even though Romina already lives with a boyfriend.           

While there’s a whirlwind of activity as Luke has to decide how to connect with a kid he doesn’t even know, his first step is to decide to stay in the Schenectady, New York region, where the Mohawk derivation of the city name explains the title and the region itself becomes a mysterious connecting link to the story.  Luke meets a fellow biker, Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), who runs a dilapidated garage outside of town, offering him a near uninhabitable trailer as a place to stay, where a couple of grease monkeys can tinker with their bikes.  Robin, however, concocts an ingenious idea for how Luke can apply his skill set in supporting his son, by robbing banks.  While these heist sequences are among the weakest in the entire movie, with Luke growing more reckless over time, the chase sequences afterwards are simply enthralling, where he diverts the police by pulling into the back of an awaiting truck. For a brief moment, in what amounts to an instant, Romina allows Luke the chance to be a father, but he quickly oversteps the boundaries, arriving whenever he feels like it and colliding into the lives of others, like a demolition derby driver, destroying anything that he can’t control.  So much for subtlety, but it does speak to his unorthodox character, where he routinely crosses the line of criminal and morally unethical behavior, not exactly the right formula to express paternal interests.  All his plans to be a provider backfire when his ambitious appetite for quick fix robberies suddenly catches up to him and the police have him cornered.  In a strange and mysterious turn of events, the narrative attaches itself to a young police officer, Bradley Cooper as Avery Cross, the man who miraculously survives the violent shootout.  While the intricate detail of the shifting storyline is interesting, and a daring narrative tactic, it lacks the immediacy and sense of urgency of the Gosling segment.  But out of nowhere, it introduces us to Ray Liotta as a fellow police officer, immediately submerging the viewer into the moral ethics of Goodfellas (1990), where the Schenectady police force is a sewer of corruption.  Like something out of a Bobcat Goldthwait depiction, the exaggerated satire of a guy lauded and uncomfortably paraded around town as a police hero is actually tarnished with his own stain of corruption, as among other things, he feels guilty for having killed the father of another young kid just about the same age as his own son. 

Much like Luke, though from a completely different socio economic background, Avery chooses the fast track of career advancement, joining the district attorney’s office, where his personal ambition takes a toll on his marriage, jumping ahead fifteen years later where we see the changing focus on his over privileged and smugly arrogant son, Emory Cohen as AJ, who by accident or design seeks out Dane DeHaan as Jason, the surviving son of Luke Glanton, whose mother has told him nothing about his father, which only makes him more curious as he gets older.  But the budding friendship of these two, uncomfortable to say the least, is a completely manipulative relationship where AJ places pressure on Jason to provide ecstasy pills and other illicit drugs.  Why he succumbs, no one knows, as he appears to have little or nothing to gain, as AJ is little more than a spoiled, pampered and overly obnoxious bully pretending to be some kind of cool hip cat, but he’s just another bratty rich kid who gets away with murder by having well influenced parents.  As his behavior veers more out of control, he continues to suck the life out of Jason, who doesn’t realize the connection between the two fathers until it’s too late, finally realizing he’s been duped all along.  While the film attempts to suggest the sins of the fathers weigh upon the damaged and broken lives of the teenage boys, reconnecting back to the original story by means of exploring various other subplots, this is reminiscent of a long line of interconnected movies, the most infamous being the phony and completely  pretentious Paul Haggis, karma oriented CRASH (2004), or Guillermo Arriaga’s interweaving sagas for Alejando González Iñárritu.  Yet this somehow feels different, emptier, more spacious, less defined, where the memory of the past has a haunting power over the present, where characters are actually connected in ways they barely understand themselves, and however improbable, becomes highly impactful by the end with a terrific blend of poetic interior moods, beautifully established by the music of Arvo Pärt, and the gorgeous upstate New York visualizations by Sean Bobbitt.  The heavily impressionistic mosaic actually works as an extended atmospheric piece, held together by the power of the performances and deft direction that allows a richly textured mood to prevail over all the slowly developing narrative landscapes.      

Killing Them Softly

KILLING THEM SOFTLY          B                

USA  (104 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  d:  Andrew Dominick                Official site

America is not a country, it’s a business.                   —Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt)

Dominick is a New Zealand-born Australian film director and writer, adapting the screenplay from the 1974 George V. Higgins novel Cogan’s Trade, described by The New York Times "No Innocents in This Jungle" article as “the seamy netherworld of the savage seventies” where none of the characters can be considered good.  In fact, like Don Siegel’s CHARLEY VARRICK (1973) or the Coen brothers NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007), the premise is stealing money from the mob, where they send a guy to track down the money, a kind of avenging angel fixer who cleans up the mess left behind.  While the story is set in Boston, the movie was shot in New Orleans, much of it resembling an urban wasteland, where a good deal of time is spent navigating their way through this urban jungle.  While the story concerns a couple of small time hoods, Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), who think they can make a big score by ripping off the mob, the film is a series of character sketches defined by lengthy scenes of endless talking, where at times it can be clever or hilarious, but there’s also a running thread throughout that comes from continuous television or radio news reports in 2008 announcing both Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama’s vision for America, followed by President Bush describing the first signs of an unraveling, economic freefall that defined Obama’s first 100 days in office, as reality forced his hand and co-opted his feelgood vision of change, forcing him instead to bail out the banks, Wall Street brokerage houses, and the auto industry, forcing him to clean up the mess left behind by the unfettered deregulation run amuck during the Bush administration.  While this offscreen political narrative always seems to protrude into the scene, like a necessary evil, it parallels the theme of a professional mob enforcer cleaning up after the reckless behavior of undisciplined, small time punks.         

Who has a more recognizable face of the mob than Ray Liotta from Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), playing Markie, a local mobster that runs an underground card game.  Having bragged once that he ripped off his own card game to make a big score, Frankie and Russell figure if he was negligent once, he’s sure to be blamed again, taking the heat off of them.  What’s interesting about this duo is their colorful flair for lamebrained ideas.  Frankie is the kind of hood that can’t keep his mouth shut, nervous and twitchy, where he’s just a bundle of nerves, while Russell, taking a page out of Seven Psychopaths (2012), earns a living by stealing dogs and then reselling them on the black market.  Russell has an everpresent layer of sweat and grime on his face, where he’s such a lowlife junkie that it’s immediately apparent he’s not to be trusted, but for Frankie, he’s his best and only friend, so like an idiot, that’s his chosen partner in crime.  The two pull off the scam and a price is immediately placed on their heads, where even as they’re pulling off the heist, Markie tells them matter-of-factly, “You know you’re dead, don’t you?  Are you sure you want to do this?”  All we see initially is just the boots, and then an offscreen voice, but the fixer sent in the clean up the disarray is Brad Pitt as Jackie Cogan, the title character, exactly like Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, something of a throwback to Harvey Keitel’s original clean-up guy, Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe, in Pulp Fiction (1994).  While Dominick, like Tarantino, shares a love for outlaws and quirky dialogue, Dominick’s characters are less fantasy and more grounded in reality.  What’s amusing is the continually running scene with Pitt in the car with Richard Jenkins, known only as the Driver, where the two have a discussion about murders for hire, but the Driver reflects the modern era mob mentality, as he’s a legitimate businessman who answers to what amounts to a collective board of trustees that has to vote on everything they agree to before it’s authorized.  Cogan would rather make things quick and easy, save time and trouble for everyone, where his motto is “I like to kill them softly—from a distance,” but not this group, as they hesitate and agonize over every little detail in what amounts to a stalling tactic.  Cogan goes along with it, as it seems like easy money once these guys actually make up their minds.  

Cogan brings in an out-of-town partner, James Galdofini as Mickey, who drinks like a fish and screws every hooker in town, yet his colorful language is absolutely killer material, easily the best thing in the movie.  At heart, he seems to represent the viewer’s idea of a typical mob operator, as he’s all brass and balls, the kind of old-school mobster whose gutter mouth feels like a character pulled out of a David Mamet play.  But Cogan doesn’t see it that way, expecting something professional, where all the guy wants to do is drink and tell stories, where he’s as evasive as the Driver, guys that continually procrastinate and never get down to business.  As we hear the background sounds of Washington politicians promising a new world, they all seem to talk the same game about a united country, but then can’t agree among themselves how to make it happen, reduced to squabbling and incompetency, all while the country’s economic woes spiral out of control.  Cogan has to cut through this haze of pie-in-the-sky bullshit, which he finds almost mocking in tone, a kind of doublespeak that amounts to a paralysis of inaction.  He, on the other hand, after undergoing the agonizing, exhaustive, soul searching conversations about restoring the rightful, unlawful order of the criminal underworld, which are themselves a graphic picture of gangster slang, has a fairly lethal yet simplistic approach—just put a bullet in the guy’s head and be done with it. The conversations are actually funny, but there’s plenty of empty space between action scenes, plenty of down time where you’d think instead there’d be chase scenes and action galore in a movie about gangland slayings.  There are plenty of graphic scenes of violence here, given an almost ballet-like slow motion choreography, but the picture is really about probing the interior mindset of hardcore criminals, displaying a unique ability to capture the rhythms and textures of their language, heard in parallel with flowery political rhetoric espousing the nation’s ideals, all while observing the subculture of mob capitalism at work, apparently not that different from Washington, where “In America you’re on your own,” a place where selfish interests rule, where the bottom line is every action is a negotiated business decision designed to make the most amount of money.  What’s different about the mob, however, is they actually collect on their overdue debts.