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| Annapurna Pictures |
Making an economic and political point, "Killing Them Softly" is a focus on the desperation, and harshness of the underground economy. Drug-use, hopelessness, killing, gambling, and prostitution, are quite ordinary in the lives of these not so ordinary characters who feel no compunction about profiting from crime. What is lucid, is that, there must be trust and order, to secure and maintain criminal profits, and if this trust and order is violated, the violators will be subject to the brutal penal system of this underground economy.
Even with an understanding of this harsh, break your kneecap, penal system, two of the main characters, endeavor to live the good life by robbing a high stakes poker game, consequently upsetting the underground economic order, and infuriating the magnates of this economy. To seek illegitimate justice, they summon Cogan.
Tactical, self-directed, amiable but ruthless, Cogan is the enforcer who will reset the order. His approach is concise, and measured. Cogan is a businessman, and with the intermittent background oratory of Bush and Obama commenting on the poor state of the economy, the economic and political point in the fim is summed up in one phrase, "America is a business. Now fucking pay me."
