Brad Pitt's Extremely Likeable Killer

Way back at the beginning of his career, in "Kalifornia," Brad Pitt slathered grease in his long stringy hair and played a Charles Manson-like psycho serial killer. You hated him. He killed innocent people, men and women alike, and he was one of those guys you just couldn't WAIT to see get killed at the end.

Over the decades, Pitt developed more accessible, likeable screen persona as a leading man. Like most American leading men, Pitt made sure to maintain an "edge." Audiences don't like to watch an entirely milquetoast, likeable guy. Thus, in a movie like "Moneyball," Pitt is the "hero" as baseball manager Billy Beane, but he's mean around the edges, prone to anger, dismissive of "feelings" and ready to fire players at will.

Still, folks liked Pitt as Billy Beane -- his buddy-buddy relationship with the plump Jonah Hill helped keep Pitt likeable. (Why would a guy who looks like THAT hang out with a guy who looks like THAT?...professional respect, that's why.)

Armed with an Oscar nomination for "Moneyball" and a pretty big hit there as well, Brad Pitt moved on to a role that revealed itself to be: not a very nice guy at all. A killer for hire, who, in the course of "Killing Them Softly," coldly and cruelly kills three men and cares little about doing it. Its his job. He's a pro killer. A pro killer who does his work for "the mob" and thus someone who has inserted himself into a dangerous society willingly.

And yet, by the time he played the ice cold killer in "Killing Them Softly," Brad Pitt now had decades of goodwill from his audience -- the greasy psycho slug of "Kalifornia" was well behind him. THIS cold-blooded killer is actually , a pretty nice guy.

Witness:

ONE: His credo: "Killing Them Softly." Pitt points out to a mob associate(bland bald stringbean Richard Jenkins, as a hilariously penny-pinching mob middleman) that if you reveal yourself to a victim as ready to kill them.."they yell for their mothers, they cry, the beg for their lives, they crap themselves" so...all the better to "kill them softly." From a distance with a shotgun or rifle or handgun -- so "they never see it coming, they never know what hit them." Nice.

TWO: His attempt to dissuade the Mob (through Jenkins) NOT to deliver a beating to gambler Ray Liotta because "you're gonna kill him anyway, why subject him to a beating?" As it turns out, the DO beat up Liotta anyway(and its a brutal, visceral, beating that makes Liotta bleed AND vomit.) Pitt eventually does the actual killing of Liotta, but at least he tried to forestall a beating that the mob decided was necessary BEFORE death.

THREE: His conciliatory, nice treatment of a scared male hotel bar server who is undergoing withering insults from Broken Down Mob Hit Man James Gandolfini(doing Tony Soprano as a total failure). The more Gandolfini insults and terrifies the shaking waiter, the more Pitt tries to reassure the waiter that its OK, don't worry about it, Gandolfini's a pig(though Pitt never calls Gandolfin a pig..he's too NICE to do that to a hit man down on his luck.)

FOUR: Indeed, Pitt's rather polite and helpful attempts to "save Gandolfini from himself" and to offer the failed hit man a chance at redeeming himself. Ultimately, Pitt will have Gandolfini sent home and back to the bench - and he insults him a time or two -- but on balance, you figure that he realizes: this could be ME, someday, a killer brought down by too much killing.

Its a rather daring role choice by Pitt, this late in his career. Evidently , Pitt took the role as a favor to the director who gave him a great film in "The Assassination of Jesse James." But this guy is a killer, a bad guy. Still, with Pitt's charm in full force AND playing a character with a certain code of personal honor("killing them softly," trying to treat people with respect)...its a great performance to watch, a true marker of true stardom.

An extremely likeable killer.