It's not every director who can show three kids (including an
infant wrapped in swaddling clothes) perforated by bullets without so much as flinching, but that's Cooper's M.O., refined over the three films
since his relatively marshmallowy «Crazy Heart»: As in «
Black Mass» before this, violence packs more punch if depicted matter - of - factly, which somehow registers as «realistic» these days (although one suspects that it would be far more horrifying if his victims suffered slow, agonizing deaths after being shot).