Film Politik....

Obama's IRS scandal got you down?

Still cringe at the thought of "G-Dubya" and the GOP?

Don't worry. As usual, Brad Pitt can solve all your troubles.

(Formal Disclosure: I have a serious man-crush on Brad Pitt.)

Man-crushes aside, Brad Pitt has purposely enlisted his unique charisma and humanistic pathos to a few roles that reach for "bigger than him" topics.

Epic fails:
Seven Years in Tibet (Buddhism, Tibet, Western vs. Eastern Philosophies)
The Devil's Own (Some crap about the IRA)
(The guy cannot hold down an accent to save his life...)

Mind-blowing Successes:
Se7en (Nature of Good and Evil)
Fight Club (Social Malaise, Conformity, the Nature of Mental Illness)
Babel (Universality of the Human Experience)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Cost of Fame & Fortune)
The Tree of Life (Um, Life, and yes, dinosaurs...)

Killing Them Softly falls squarely into the latter category.

Killing Them Softly was directed by Andrew Dominik.

Mr. Dominik is a dude from New Zealand and directed Brad Pitt in one of my all-time favorite movies, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Some of the big questions raised in "Jesse James" were: What is the cost of fame and fortune? How strong are the bonds of family? Why are God's gifts so generous to one and not another?

Jesse James is one of those movies that keeps getting better every time I watch it.

(Essentially, for me, that is the ultimate test for art. Does it get better with time?)

In Jesse James, the characters are not always just the characters. They are representative symbols as well. Additionally, the scenery is not always just the scenery, but masterful cinematic strokes transforming the internal into the external.

Dominik and Pitt (along with captivating portrayals by Casey Affleck and Sam Rockwell) give you levels to work on. It is pure brilliant, nerdy, psychological fun...

So, when I heard that Dominik and Pitt were teaming up again for Killing Them Softly, I expected more of the same.

I was not disappointed.

Where Jesse James was a beautiful throwback to the Western genre, Dominik takes an alarmingly modern--almost post-apocolyptic--take on the pulp-crime-thriller genre.

The film starts out like an alien transmission tuning in to Earth. You follow a shadowy figure out of a godforsaken tunnel into a mess of a world. Trash floods the streets as political ads and "calls for change" are heard and seen in the background.

Dominik takes no time letting you know that this film takes place at the cusp of "the great recession."

My words will pay no justice to the visuals presented. You just need to see the movie, alright!?

Just be warned, if you thought Dominik and Pitt were gonna use their influence to make a film about America's response to "the great recession" as "Obama-ganda," you're dead wrong.

Pitt's character, Jackie Cogan sums it up best:

"I'm living in America and in America, you're on your own. America's not a country. It's just a business. Now fuckin' pay me."