Cogan : Killing Them Softly

Un film de gangster avec un casting stellaire qui peine à être d'une grande originalité. Mais ses personnages (à l'exception de Brad le boss) sont des connards qui n'inspirent pas le respect et qui ne sont même pas drôlement cool. Et les dialogues manquent de fun et de sens (sauf le dernier message de Brad). La partie la plus intéressante du film est la mise en relief de l'histoire d'un groupe criminel sans valeur avec des répliques de discours télévisés de George W. Bush ou de Barrack Obama sur la grandeur de l'Amérique présente et future. Les visuels et les ralentis du film ajoutent une touche d'exclusivité, mais ils n'ont rien de nouveau et, pour être honnête, ils sont meilleurs dans Avengers. La caméra montée sur la portière de la voiture, copiant le mouvement d'ouverture et de fermeture, se trouvait déjà chez Tarantino (et Dieu sait où il l'a trouvée). Les détours ludiques dans le récit sont agréables, mais avec le recul, ils sentent l'égoïsme (le personnage de Gandolfini et son importance dans l'histoire) et dans la finale ils mènent toujours à la solution que nous supposions déjà en regardant l'affiche du film. (25/04/2020)

Rebellious to the core, incredibly polished, skillfully directed, with a mature script. The story may be trivial, but the political subtext is harsh and uncompromising, just like the brawls and wide-open violence. After a long time, a gangster film with guts, which knows what it wants to say and literally screams it to the world. (06/07/2013)

Modern-day realism in an old-school blazer. Dominik changes the rules of storytelling, while also balancing the human and political angles. Bush and Obama are depicted often as ridiculous figures thanks to their speeches about unity and faith in the stars and stripes in this game dominated by Pitt’s Cogan. The actors are perfect, the message short and sharp. Everything stands on the last few lines. America is not a country, it’s a business. Now fucking pay me. (02/01/2013)

A solid gangster movie. It’s not boring, but I can’t say it’s anything extraordinary. I didn’t get to know enough about any of the characters to really care for them, and it seems that a character that is introduced at the beginning doesn’t appear until the end just to kill someone. Given that in the end they stick a couple of minutes with some sort of message, my complaint could be disregarded by the fact that it’s clearly intentional. But come on! For me, nothing to write home about, no matter how I look at it. Points for the slow-motion shootout in the rain and the scene with the stoned dialogue. Otherwise, the most interesting thing about this film are the elegant posters. (30/12/2012)

It’s a bit boring, but you still get the bad boy Brad Pitt, who’ll get his head spinning trying to solve a pretty complicated case. Anyways, since the story isn’t that interesting, at least the setting is. It’s been a long time, if ever, since I saw a movie dealing with a financial crisis as urgently as this one does. But I guess it really works this way with thieves. I guess it was supposed to mean that since people don’t have much money in a crisis, people buy much less and the loot isn’t worth much, either. The score certainly wasn’t great here, which the thieves got to understand pretty quickly. (10/10/2014)