The Killing

Stanley Kubrick's coming-out party from the mid '50s is a startlingly accurate prediction of film's future. By way of a non-linear narration and a few remarkably fresh transitions, Kubrick adds considerable weight and magnitude to a tangled heist tale and its focus on the crooks behind a slick, daring stickup of the local racetrack. Confused by the film's radical new approach to storytelling, test audiences hated the first cut, leading to studio meddling and an almost-complete disintegration of its marketing budget. Kubrick fought back, though, and with the obvious exception of a horribly heavy-handed deadpan narration, the finished product seems virtually untouched. Concerned mostly with the planning and hand-wringing before the big theft, The Killing tensely builds anticipation throughout before finally boiling over in a machine gun-paced robbery scene, terse payoff and all-too-brief elaboration on the major players' ultimate fates. Acceptably acted at best, the real stars of this picture are the complex plot and the harvest of fresh ideas going on behind the lens. A clear inspiration for Tarantino's big hits of the '90s, it's a daring and stylish major market debut for the famed director that hints at the lengths his development would ultimately take the medium.

Director Stanley Kubrick is best known for "2001: A Space Odyssey." "A Clockwork Orrange" or "The Shining" but I always found this to be my favorite of his films. This is film noir at some of its best: a tight no-nonsense story with tragic consequences, some of the best film noir actors in the business and great cinematography, which looks even better on DVD.

Sterling Hayden is the gang leader in this heist film and the big man was up to the task as he usually was in these kind of crime films. He wasn't as rough a character as he was in "Asphalt Jungle," but his role reminded me of that film.

What made this movie so appealing to me were four very interesting character actors: Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor, Kola Kwariani and Ted de Corsia. Few people had those loser-type film noir characters down pat as well as the tough-talking Windsor and the meek and wimpy Cook. They played a husband-and-wife team here: that's film noir heaven!

Kwariani plays a burley chess-playing wrestler who fights six cops at one time and Carey is a long-distance racist rifleman who talks through clenched-teeth and shoots a racehorse! As I said, some very interesting characters here.

And, oh yeah.....for you over-55 readers, there's Vince Edwards, alias Dr. Ben Casey of TV fame, as a Windsor's young adulterer boyfriend trying to horn in on the money from the robbery.

This film is full of surprises and always fun to watch.

There is a plan that just can't fail no matter what, take the racetrack's banked cash roll, take all it's got, everybody knows their place, where to be for the big race, then where to gather, to take their share, of the big pot.

A piece of cinema magic that to this day leaves you astounded at the brilliance of the writer/director, amazed at the sensational performances by some truly great actors, and as engaged as you could ever hope to be with a story that nestles nicely in the age and the era from which it was born, an accomplishment that so many films of that time fail to achieve when revisited.

Film noir in all its splendor, with a very dynamic rhythm, far from '2001, a space odyssey': an audacious burglary seems perfectly orchestrated and prepared with a surgical precision, until a minor glitch transforms a 'Symphonie fantastique' in a 'Descente d'Orphée aux enfers'.

The Killing is a film whose legacy can still be seen in many films today. This film is not only Stanley Kubrick's first acclaimed film, but it is also credited with inventing the concept of non-linear story telling for the film industry. Some recent films that have used this technique are Reservior Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Go, Wonderland and The Usual Suspects.

The story deals with a motley crew of assorted criminals, inside men, and average joes just looking to get their hands on a large sum of money by stealing it from a racetrack. Sterling Hayden plays Johnny Clay, a hardened criminal who just finished serving a five-year prison sentence. He is the ringleader of the bunch who is determined to only go for the big heists from now on. He figures they can put you away for stealing ten dollars as easily as ten million, so what have you got to lose? The rest of the crew are mostly average people with average problems, as Clay explains early on. Some of them work at the track. One is a crooked cop. Two are hardened criminals added at the last minute to cause diversions. Everything has been timed and planned out to the letter. Of course in a film like this, things never go as planned. It wouldn't be entertaining if they did.

The killing was made on a budget of well below half a million dollars, and it shows. The film looks cheap at times, but the story is more than enough to make you forgive its financial shortcomings. The acting is nothing too special. Hayden is strong and resourceful as Johnny Clay, but he's pretty wooden. Elisha Cook Jr. is pretty good as a hen-pecked husband who is taking part in the scheme to impress his high-maintenance wife. If this film were re-cast today, you'd have to think of William H. Macy to play this character. Timothy Carey is always memorable, even with such a small part like the one he has here. Such a strange-looking guy! He gets the most interesting assignment of all the people in on the heist.

You can really tell this was made fifty years ago. Even though there are hardened criminals and low-lifes in nearly every scene, nobody ever says the F-word! There is, however, a fairly gory shootout in one scene which you normally didn't find in films back then. The killing was ahead of its time in more ways than one, I guess. Please be sure to check this one out! 8 of 10 stars.

The Hound.