It’s Based on a Book?
You might not guess it from the trailer, but the new Brad Pitt movie, Killing Them Softly, opening this Friday, is based on George V. Higgins’ Cogan’s Trade, published in 1974.
Several of the reviews, however, note the connection. Reviewer David Edelstein comments in New York magazine, “Everything in Killing Them Softly that springs from George V. Higgins’s 1974 crime novel Cogan’s Trade is very fine: grimly amusing then shockingly brutal.”
In the New Yorker, Anthony Lane devotes half his review to Higgins, wondering why there aren’t more movies based on his books, calling them “a trove, begging to be raided for linguistic loot. If you want to grade postwar novelists on the strength of their ears alone—how fast they prick up at the crackle and blare of American speech—then Higgins and Elmore Leonard, you could argue, lead the pack, ahead of more distinguished names.”
If the reviewers have their say, the movie would bring a renaissance of interest in Higgins, which makes it fortunate that Random House’s Vintage/Lizard imprint recently re-released several of the author’s 25 novels (in print and ebooks, available on OverDrive), including Cogan’s Trade.
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The tie-in uses the movie title.
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