Pitt and Gandofini: The "True Romance" Reunion

Evidently Brad Pitt had to talk James Gandolfini into taking his role in Killing Them Softly. It was a gangster role, and Gandolfini wanted to get away from those. Gandolfini was using Alan Alda(who broke free from his MASH role to make it as lead and support in movies) as a role model to break away from Tony Soprano.

But Pitt and Gandolfini had worked together almost 20 years earlier in the Tarantino-written, Tony Scott-directed "True Romance" and -- they evidently had a friendship connection over the decades.

Look at the scene in True Romance some time -- Gandolfini is young, relatively trim and with a full head of hair as his Mafia goon asks questions of stoner Pitt. Its a funny scene with underlying tension -- Gandolfini is a brutal, dangerous man and if Pitt doesn't answer right -- danger. But it is also a nice "preview" of the Gandolfini career to come -- and Pitt is really playing a cameo here, he's not yet the star he will become.

Cut to: 19 years later. Gandolfini is now as famously Tony Soprano as Alan Alda was Hawkeye Pierce (or more on point, as Jackie Gleason was Ralph Kramden.) Many pounds have been gained(pounds that would soon kill Gandolfini youngish at 51). He's bald.

But he's still a powerful, charismatic actor. And Pitt - a handsome young man aged into an even more handsome middle-aged man with a youthful look -- is great too.

Pitt and Gandolfini have two scenes: one in an airport bar; the other in a hotel room as Gandolfini bids his hooker farewell(Pitt won't zip her up: "Get your trick to zip you up.")

The bar scene is better in terms of showing Pitt and Gandolfini at their physical best. They are well lit and the dialogue shows off their respective personas to the max.

But something is "off" with Gandolfini: it turns out that he is playing a mob character very, very VERY removed from Tony Soprano.

Gandolfini isn't a mob boss here. He's a mob underling, a hitman for hire secured by Pitt to "do a job" and over he course of the two scenes, Pitt realize that Gandolfini is damaged goods, no good as a hitman any more, a broken down alcoholic with a hooker habit. Pitt's reactions are a mixture of sadness and practical shrewdness. Gandolfini can't "do the job." Pitt won't have him killed -- but he'll use Gandolfini's hooker habit to send him back to prison.

Though Pitt gets a lot done with silent looks of pain and disgust, Gandolfini carries a big, big load of well-written novelistic poetry courtesy of crime novelist George Higgins. Much of "Killing Them Softly" consists of this kind of long winded(but delightful) speechifying. Its QT before there was QT (see: The Friends of Eddie Coyle from 1973 with Robert Mitchum as a precursor.)

Anyway, the rest of the movie has its moments, and its great actors(the guy who played Johnny Sack is here, even more alarmingly overweight and tired looking than Gandolfini) but the core of the movie are these scenes.

Pitt and Gandolfini. Two great stars. Both worth watching and listening to.

And now...only one of them is still here.