Pun Salad

A very bleak, bloody crime thriller marked by pretentiousness. Maybe it's Brad Pitt's least glamorous role? I'd hate to do the research. It is based on the George V. Higgins novel Cogan's Trade; although that book was written around forty years ago, set in and around Boston, the movie's was filmed in New Orleans and takes place in 2008.

I haven't read the book, but based on the Wikipedia entry, the movie is remarkably plot-faithful. A group of petty crooks conspire to knock over a mafia-protected card game. Their scheme rapidly falls apart, and Brad Pitt, playing hitman Jackie Cogan, is called in to punish the upstarts. He's directed by lawyer "Driver" (Richard Jenkins), whose strings are pulled by shadowy Mob higher-ups.

There's a darkly comic element revolving around Cogan's cynicism and efforts to behave professionally while all around him are relative screwups: Driver's bosses are criminals, fine, but they're also bureacratized and risk-averse, avoiding the decisions Cogan knows have to be made. Cogan hires an assistant, Mickey (James Gandolfini) to deal with one of the targets; Mickey has turned into a worthless drunken lecher.

I mentioned the movie was pretentious. Over many scenes of seedy criminality, we hear speeches given by Obama, Dubya, McCain, et.al., mostly on the topic of the financial crisis of 2008. I assume the point is the theft of billions by Wall Street bigwigs in their corporate jets, while normal criminal lowlife scum bicker, assault, and shoot each other in the gutters over relatively paltry sums. The movie's final scene has Brad Pitt haggling with Richard Jenkins over a $5K difference in his hitman fee, while Obama pontificates on a nearby TV, and Cogan makes a little speech about Thomas Jefferson being a wine-snob slaveholder.

Subtle and insightful? No, pretentious and tedious.