Give the mainstream what it wants, and no one has to get hurt

DONALD CLARKE CANNES 2012:Cannes gets a lift from the latest Brad Pitt vehicle, while Ken Loach continues to broaden his horizons

KILLING THEM SOFTLY Directed by Andrew Dominik Starring Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Slaine, Bella Heathcote 104 min, playing in competition

Andrew Dominik is known for just two films: the rough Australian crime drama Chopper and the gorgeous, elegiac western (deep breath) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Brad Pitt, star of the latter, returns in this darkly funny adaptation of George V Higgins’s novel Cogan’s Trade. The film has, however, more in common with that earlier, bloody examination of underworld mores. It is as profane, talky and propulsive as Chopper. But it also has a surprising, sometimes slightly preachy political subtext. After the mild disappointment that was John Hillcoat’s Lawless, Killing Me Softly regains some ground for the mainstream at Cannes.

The film begins with a superbly rendered heist. Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy play two hopeless losers who are persuaded to hold up a poker game.

Knowing that the joint’s operator (Ray Liotta) is suspected of previously organising a robbery of his own establishment, they assume nobody will look elsewhere for a suspect. Dominik shows off to good effect. As the boys make their way to and from the grubby room, the stunning sound design charts their progress with hisses, rumbles and clicks. The heist itself is both tense and funny.

Of course, things don’t work out for the bungling layabouts. One says too much and soon two serious villains are commissioned to hunt them down. James Gandolfini plays the fat, angry one. Brad Pitt is the slightly more urbane, mildly more considerate one.

The script is stuffed full of tart, cynical one-liners. From time to time, the constant chatter becomes wearing, but, before that condition turns terminal, a gorgeously bitter snatch of dialogue always arrives. The violence is responsibly extreme: that’s to say it looks as if the victims are actually getting hurt. The cast all dirty themselves up convincingly.

The film does stumble somewhat when it tries to wind politics and economics into the piece. The scriptwriters have updated Higgins’s 1974 novel to the autumn of 2008. As events progress, snippets of Obama’s election campaign – scored to the glum music of the great crash – are set beside scenes of Americans gambling, negotiating and cheating.

There’s no arguing with one character’s assertion that America “is a business”. But I think we knew that already.

THE ANGELS’ SHARE

Directed by Ken Loach Starring John Henshaw, William Ruane, Gary Maitland, Roger Allam, Paul Brannigan 101 min, playing in competition

The time has, perhaps, come to redefine what we mean by a Ken Loach film.

For too long, an unfair, unattractive caricature has hung around the director. He, apparently, makes angry, grim realist films that work hard at depressing the viewer. Really? His last picture, Route Irish, was a thriller. Before that, he made the serious comedy Looking for Eric. What about The Wind that Shakes the Barley?

Loach’s latest film, written by long-term collaborator Paul Laverty, does return to the working-class environs he so enjoys exploring. Moreover, set in Glasgow, The Angels’ Share certainly has its moments of searing drama: notably when the protagonist confronts a man he beat roughly enough to cause brain damage. But, at its core, this is a light-hearted comedy in the Ealing style. Indeed, at times, it comes across like an updating of that studio’s Whisky Galore!.

Paul Brannigan plays Robbie, an ex-con who is still trying to extricate himself from a decade-long tribal feud. When he confronts his newborn son he decides to work harder at distancing himself from violence. He makes friends with the decent chap (John Henshaw) who supervises his community service and begins to take an interest in malt whisky. Then an opportunity presents itself.

You could get yourself in a terrible pickle trying to straighten out the moral stance of The Angels’ Share. The film is sternly unforgiving about Robbie’s earlier adventures as a violent hard-nut. But when he hatches a plan to steal some small portion of a hugely valuable malt, we are encouraged to view the scheme as a forgivable lark.

Mind you, Ealing felt much the same way about the thieves in The Lavender Hill Mob and the scavengers in Whisky Galore!. So, we should, perhaps, just shelve our objections and enjoy the ride.

Happily, that proves easy enough to do. The story is not hugely plausible. The posh characters are much less well drawn than the working-class larrikins. But the film abounds with strong, bawdy jokes and (as expected from a Loach film) profits from effortlessly natural, rooted performances.

Who cares that Ken Loach doesn’t make Ken Loach films any more? Perhaps he never did.