TheRetroCritic

Occasionally a comedy comes along that's just so weird or mean-spirited that studios just don't know how to market it. I'm thinking The Cable Guy , Super or even Neighbors , back in the day. Observe And Report , be warned, isn't the Paul Blart: Mall Cop -style knockabout cartoon comedy it was sold as. In fact, this is the much darker tale of what happens when a deluded, if well-meaning, sociopath goes off his meds. Seth Rogen, in possibly his best role to date, plays Ronnie, head of mall security, who takes his job a little too seriously. When a flasher repeatedly invades the mall, the police are called in and Ray Liotta's cop begins a routine investigation which Ronnie promptly interferes with, thinking he's on some sort of one-man crusade to protect Anna Faris' odious perfume salesgirl. He takes the case into his own hands, which inspires him to try and join the police force and ask Faris out. Both plans, of course, backfire. It's good to see

Killing Them Softly has been sold thusfar as a cool, action packed Brad Pitt-starring gangster flick but I find that it's more of a serious version of Burn After Reading ! Think about it: here's a film that's more about the politics behind criminal goings-on than it is about the events themselves with a hardly seamless plan gone wrong, Pitt himself, some surprise casualties and a clueless puppetmaster keeping it all in check, kind of. If Joel and Ethan Coen had been in a worse mood when penning the infinitely more cartoonish Burn After Reading, this is probably what we would have ended up with. As it stands, I'm quite happy we got both. Killing Them Softly will disappoint those expecting the next gangster epic, there is some action there but it comes in short, out-of-nowhere, effective bursts. Most of the time we follow Brad Pitt's hitman as he goes around trying to organize the appropriate retaliation for a poker game heist set up by one of their own. Bas