K illing Them Softly is a 2012 crime film directed by Australian filmmaker illing Them Softly is a 2012 crime film directed by Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik . The movie premiered at the 65th annual Cannes Film Festival

in May 2012

. Based on a 1974 novel named

by

, Killing Them Softly is essentially a cinematic metaphor that serves to be a tongue-in-cheek satire on the increasingly moribund

US

economy and its prime stakeholders. During the course of the Second World War, the only nation to have grown richer was the

United States of America

. And since then the

US

never missed a single opportunity to use its superior purchasing power to dictate its terms to the whole world, but things changed drastically after the 2008 economic slowdown. The Bush Administration, t

he most conspicuous culprit responsible for the turmoil,

was ousted and in came the great savior: Barack Hussein Obama. Desperate times demanded desperate measures, and the Obama Administration was quick to realize it. The country which had taught the world the true meaning of an “open economy” suddenly chose to close its doors to the rest of the world as a means of damage control. In Killing Them Softly, in a much similar manner, a mob-run American town is left in a state of shambles after a couple of smalltime robbers, Frankie and Russell, under the instructions of a resourceful crook, stage a successful heist during a mob-protected poker game—the main source of the mob’s earnings. Soon after, the mob calls upon a hit man named Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) to clean up the mess.