Brad Pitt plays hitman with Freudian issues

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Brad Pitt at Cannes. (CP)

CANNES, France -- It's usual to see egos on display at the Cannes film festival, but seldom does the show get more Freudian than at the press conference for Brad Pitt's latest film, Killing Them Softly.

Director Andrew Dominik, who last worked with Pitt on 2007's The Assassination of Jesse James, divided the film's character into Freudian triumvirates. Scoot McNairy, playing a small-time criminal, is partnered with a fellow felon (Ben Mendelsohn) as "the pleasure-seeking id," and Vincent Curatola as the authoritarian superego who gets them to knock over an illegal casino run by Ray Liotta.

Pitt plays organized crime hitman Jackie Cogan; the film is an adaptation of George V. Higgins' 1974 novel Cogan's Trade, though it's set in 2008 on the cusp of Barack Obama's presidential election. Cogan's id is James Gandolfini as a hard-drinking, hard-living reprobate. Richard Jenkins, the mob go-between who hires Cogan to sort out the aftermath of the robbery, is the superego.

"Scoot is basically trying to get his id and his superego to agree with each other, and he ends up dead," said Dominik. "And Brad, when his id gets in problems, he puts it in jail.

"The movie is basically telling people to have good mental health," he concluded. "Not to blindly seek pleasure, and not to indulge in too much self-punishment. And if you do that in a cutthroat, capitalist, Darwinist environment, then you'll do fine."

Killing Them Softly is one of the more middling contributions to what has been a strong lineup up at Cannes this year. Its setting, during the 2008 financial crisis, is telescoped rather heavy-handedly, through repeated images of Obama's campaign speeches and the use of Depression-era music in the soundtrack.

It's heavy on dialogue, but the words seldom crackle, although Pitt's final line in the film -- "America isn't a country; it's a business," followed by a directive to pay up -- echoed in many a critic's mind after the screening.

The film also features moments of intense violence. (It takes its title from Pitt's character's desire to kill his victims "softly," with a minimum of crying, begging for life or other embarrassments.) Both its director and its star defended the use of violence in the film.

"I like violence in movies," said Dominik. "Movies are drama, and the most dramatic expression of drama is violence."

"We live in such a violent world," Pitt added. "I grew up hunting, which is a very violent act. Have you ever had a hamburger? If you've seen how they butcher a cow, it's barbaric. This is the world we live in. So I see it as absolutely important to the film."

Pitt said that even being a father doesn't make him think twice about taking on the role of a killer. "Violence is an accepted part of the gangster world," he said. "Murder is an accepted possibility when you're dealing with crime. I would have a much harder time playing something like a racist. It would be much more upsetting for me than a guy who shoots another guy in the face."

Liotta wasn't interested in delving into questions of violence or psychology, however. "I just want to play pretend," he said. "I'm just here to service the story. Sounds like a lot of work to go the other way."

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 23, 2012 D3