Change Your Image
ljblind
Reviews
Killing Them Softly (2012)
A parallel story of promises never kept
Most reviews of this film talk about what we see on the screen. There is more here than meets the eye. The setting is the City World gone bad. The action revolves around retribution for a heist of a mafia protected card game that threatens this small time underworld economy. Someone has to pay and be made an example of so this does not happen again. But it does happen again and the wrong person is blamed. The fixer is brought in, Brad Pitt as Jackie, who agrees to fix things for Richard Jenkins, Driver. There will be blood and lots of it. At times I wanted to walk out of this film. The hoods are losers, disgusting, stupid, filthy, addicted and pathetic. The violence is brutal. The language comes from the mouths of people who have become brain stem creatures. But I stayed to the end much like each character in the film. In the background, playing on car radios and displayed on large flat screen TVs, is the news about the fall of the American economy and the rise of Barack Obama during his campaign and eventual election. These CNN clips parallel life on the bad street where people fight for territory, their next buck—to keep their end of the "deal". They interrogate one an other for the truth, turn on one an other and endlessly lie. So we are watching parallel stories about the protection of the rich and powerful for the promise—a so called dream that is always out of reach. There is a polemic in Killing Them Softly about all men being created equal penned by the father of our country who kept slaves and did what he wanted with them. Without giving away too much of the ending, the main character utters our own sentiment when he says, "Pay me." I am glad I stayed to the end and glad for production companies like Plan B.
Won't Back Down (2012)
Like paying to watch a campaign ad
While the actors in this film tug at our hearts, the force feeding of incomplete perspective causes one to question: Are we watching a screen play or are we getting played? The bad guys are too bad, and the good guys are too good. The film is also unbelievable in that the parents are without any alternatives but a drastic one. I left the theater with a disturbing feeling, not about our schools, but about the integrity of the producers, writers and director. The opening should have a SUPER that reads, A paid political announcement. You can get your money back from the management. What a waste of effort on such a timely issue as the quality of our children's education. So in the end a story about two caring women and their struggle to fix their school, is about a billionaire fixing the audience, truly an exploitation film.