Review of The Killing (1956) by Kenneth L — 21 Oct 2011

This is a great film noir from Stanley Kubrick, who was clearly already a great filmmaker when he made this as a young man. It is quite original in many of its techniques and classically noir in others, and it's surprisingly dark and cynical for a 1956 film. Noir movies are always great, but this one is particularly interesting. (Also, it indirectly inspired Reservoir Dogs).

The movie tells a heist story, but a darker and more realistic one than you often see. The characters aren't smooth Ocean's Eleven-style professionals: a couple of them are tough career criminals, but most of them are just normal guys who are offered a chance to get rich quick and take it. The heist itself is very cleverly planned, and we see how it plays out in meticulous detail. To show us how everything happens, the film uses a fractured timeline very similar to the one used recently in Vantage Point, except it works way better here. A narrator will tell us the exact minutes when one scene occurs, and then we get sent back a couple of hours to see how another element of the heist goes. The screenplay by Kubrick and noir novelist Jim Thompson (based on a novel by Lionel White) is absolutely brilliant in the way it leads us around the story. I particularly liked the way the announcer of a horse race serves as a sound bridge linking various scenes and letting us know exactly when certain things happen.

There isn't really a central protagonist in the film - it devotes almost equal amounts of attention to several different characters. The most important character is the career criminal played by Sterling Hayden, who is convincingly tough, although we don't get much background information on the character. Elisha Cook, Jr. has a great role as a nervous clerk. Marie Windsor is a particularly cold and sordid femme fatale. Most of the actors in the cast weren't huge stars, but they work really well as an ensemble.

Visually, the movie is an interesting combination of old-school noir style and the characteristic feel of a Stanley Kubrick film. Near the beginning of the film, there are tons of noir-y shadows, and lamps which provide light only in very particular places. Kubrick repeatedly makes the interesting choice of placing objects between the camera and the actors. There's a lot of panning shots that reminded me of later shots in The Shining, and a remarkable first-person-perspective shot near the end. The various story threads each have their own shocking, sudden, often brutal and ironic climaxes. This is a smart, well-made movie that hits hard in ways you don't expect.