Killing Them Softly features Brad Pitt as Jackie Cogan, a mob enforcer who goes on the prowl when small-time crooks (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) rob a mob-backed poker game. In the trailer, Cogan's a seasoned veteran of the trade with a well-oiled technique for manipulation of the aforementioned criminals (both in way over their heads).

The film's practically an Cogan's Trade.

Dominik and Pitt collaborated before on The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford; Killing Them Softly (which premiered at Cannes this year) is prompting similar love/hate reactions. Most of the film's "action scenes" amount to charged conversations between characters hanging out in seedy clubs, hotel rooms, and vintage automobiles (with some of those talks culminating in bloody carnage).

Early buzz also paints Killing Them Softly as a contemplative (at time, mediative) examination of American capitalism, opening with a Barack Obama speech excerpt and featuring dialogue like Cogan's trailer line about "living in America." People who only watch the theatrical promo might walk away disappointed when the final film turns out fewer scenery-chewing performances and thrills (in favor of quiet, thoughtful, storytelling).

Several cinephiles who've seen Killing Them Softly are comparing it to last year's we loved Drive, so if Killing Them Softly is a chip off the same block, that's fine by us.