Released on the cusp of the 2012 awards season, Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly was strangely, some might say cruelly, ignored by most of the mainstream awards, a fate which mirrored its failure to connect with a broad audience. Granted, it's still the most commercially successful film of Dominik's career and it did not want for critical attention, but this seems much too modest a fate for a film which, whilst flawed, is still a fascinating, often brilliant attempt to make a down-and-dirty crime thriller which doubles as a (perhaps too) pointed political commentary.