Killing Them Softly (2012)

This is an unrepentantly cynical take on the hope-and-change promised to the US in 2008; this year's election race makes it look even bleaker, an icily confident black comedy of continued disillusion.

The film is terribly smart in every respect, with ne'er-a-false note performances and superb craft work from top to bottom.

Uncompromising and uncommercial, divisive and brave, Killing Them Softly bitterly boils at the state of the nation.

A routine, even mundane crime story relayed in tones of world-weary fatigue, Killing Them Softly deglams the mob movie to coolly distinctive if rarely pulse-quickening effect.

Killing Them Softly tries hard - and succeeds - to be a film of the now with its political parallels right in front of us. Yet it's also an invisible companion to the dirty business at hand - and it is a business.