The past week or so has seen a handful of new titles assigned to upcoming movies. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut is now known as "Don Jon's Addiction," David Chase's period-based music movie is now called "Not Fade Away" and Kathryn Bigelow's Osama Bin Laden thriller has a fresh (working) title: "Zero Dark Thirty." And those are all fine changes, nothing too shocking and in keeping with what those films are about. But yet another movie has been given a new moniker, and we're less pleased about this one.
Variety writer Jeff Sneider has tweeted that Andrew Dominik's "Cogan's Trade" has been given a new, much more generic title of "Killing Them Softly." We suppose The Weinstein Company thinks that "killing" is a much sexier marquee word than "trade" — and they may be right — but now the movie sounds like any generic, straight-to-DVD actioner. The original title had the sort of pulp sheen of the material (and was the name of the book it's based on) but now it just all sounds much more rote.
Anyway, the film is led by Brad Pitt and is a comic crime caper/thriller based on the George V. Higgins novel about a mob enforcer (Pitt) trying to track down a pair of junkies who've ripped off a poker game. A ridiculously great cast including Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Bella Heathcote, Sam Shepard and Garrett Dillahunt are along for the ride, and frankly whatever this is called, we'll be watching anyway.
"Killing Them Softly" will hit theaters on September 21st.