Andrew Dominik demonstrates that peculiarly British ability to condemn Americans as reactionaries and as rebels both at once. Near the end of this bizarre and often stomach-turning film the central character, a coldly efficient mob hit man, launches a barroom diatribe against Thomas Jefferson--yes, our third President, author of the Declaration of Independence and founder of the University of Virginia who doubled the size of the country by the Louisiana Purchase!
Now, Jefferson's war record might have been somewhat iffy but he certainly was more than a wine snob and slave humping lecher.
It's understandable that a fifty year old novel might require a few changes to film it in this era. What we see on the screen here however is in no way the character study mob prosecutor turned novelist George Higgins made from listening to hundreds of hours of bugged and wiretapped conversations and reducing them to written transcripts with every grammatical mistake, every stammer and of course every obscenity exactly captured.
It is instead an anti-American diatribe with excerpts from the speeches of candidate Obama and President W. Bush continually playing in the background. This annoying counterpoint is meant, one supposes, to show in classic Marxist fashion that it doesn't matter who becomes President because elected government is a sham, America is heartless and corrupt offering no opportunities but crime either big-time like the bankers or small potatoes like the career creeps who feature in this picture.
Along with Brad Pitt himself, at least a dozen people are given a producing credit for this movie, counting all the associate producers and assistant producers. This may explain why this ill digested story of the robbery of a mob-protected poker game and its consequences turned out as it did.
Nor is Dominik without flaw as a screenwriter. He cannot keep Britishisms out of the speech of his Americans. Americans don't "piss themselves" and they never "have a go" at anyone or anything. The characters in the novel, several of them, are changed to where they make no sense in the story. The New England Mafia run out of Providence, RI by capo Raymond Patriarca becomes some faceless corporate entity.
There are some pluses. The cinematography captures the bleakness of certain parts of Boston. In what turned out to be his swan song James Gandolfini plays an out of town gunman pretty much as George Higgins created him. Brad Pitt is suitably cunning as the murderous Jackie Cogan whose job is to set things right when criminals get out of line and prey on each other.
Now, Jefferson's war record might have been somewhat iffy but he certainly was more than a wine snob and slave humping lecher.
It's understandable that a fifty year old novel might require a few changes to film it in this era. What we see on the screen here however is in no way the character study mob prosecutor turned novelist George Higgins made from listening to hundreds of hours of bugged and wiretapped conversations and reducing them to written transcripts with every grammatical mistake, every stammer and of course every obscenity exactly captured.
It is instead an anti-American diatribe with excerpts from the speeches of candidate Obama and President W. Bush continually playing in the background. This annoying counterpoint is meant, one supposes, to show in classic Marxist fashion that it doesn't matter who becomes President because elected government is a sham, America is heartless and corrupt offering no opportunities but crime either big-time like the bankers or small potatoes like the career creeps who feature in this picture.
Along with Brad Pitt himself, at least a dozen people are given a producing credit for this movie, counting all the associate producers and assistant producers. This may explain why this ill digested story of the robbery of a mob-protected poker game and its consequences turned out as it did.
Nor is Dominik without flaw as a screenwriter. He cannot keep Britishisms out of the speech of his Americans. Americans don't "piss themselves" and they never "have a go" at anyone or anything. The characters in the novel, several of them, are changed to where they make no sense in the story. The New England Mafia run out of Providence, RI by capo Raymond Patriarca becomes some faceless corporate entity.
There are some pluses. The cinematography captures the bleakness of certain parts of Boston. In what turned out to be his swan song James Gandolfini plays an out of town gunman pretty much as George Higgins created him. Brad Pitt is suitably cunning as the murderous Jackie Cogan whose job is to set things right when criminals get out of line and prey on each other.