Monday, December 3, 2012

It's the Economy, Stupid: 'Killing Them Softly'

Andrew Dominik's "Killing Them Softly" is the latest crime film to have rankled the American public, so it would seem. Remember last year when some lady sued the makers of "Drive" because it did not live up to her "Fast and the Furious" expectations?

So, Dominik's film has received an 'F' grade on Cinemascore, which I believe says more about Cinemascore's users than it does the film.

Regardless, while I liked "Killing Them Softly" - quite a bit, actually - I don't think it's as good as Dominik's previous film, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford."

"Killing" is a pretty grim and cynical crime film that doubles as an allegory for the 2008 financial meltdown and the U.S.'s economic system as a whole. While I don't think it's in the same category as "Drive," it's still quite good.

But I can't say the same for Marialy Rivas's randy "Young and Wild," which tells the tale of a young Chilean Evangelical whose hormones run wild, prompting her to start a blog and take up relations, as it were, with a young man and woman simultaneously.

The film has its moments, but it's a case of a filmmaker trying too hard to shock so-called bourgeois values and, in the process, losing control of the narrative. In essence, it's just OK.

Here are my Patch reviews.

This coming weekend, I'll catch Mike Newell's "Hyde Park on Hudson" as well as at least one other of these three: "Lay the Favorite," "Playing the Field" or "Only the Young."

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