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Colleen Gray, Elisha Cook Jr., Jay C. Flippen, Marie Windsor, Sterling Hayden ...( see more  see more... ) , Vince Edwards

Crooks plan and execute a daring racetrack robbery.

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90% liked it

15,645 ratings

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96% liked it

25 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 25 min.

Directed by: Stanley Kubrick

Release Date: January 1, 1956

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DVD Release Date: August 15, 2001

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Stats: 830 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (830)

  • garyX
    September 11, 2009
    garyX
    Fresh out of prison, a career criminal cooks up an ingenious scheme to rob a racetrack. An early film from Stanley Kubrick, and yet another masterclass. He takes to the visual trappings of Film Noir and creates one of the most efficiently told and tautly directed heist films ever...( read more) made. Sterling Hayden is perfect as the straight-talking, street-wise mastermind, as is Marie Windsor's Machiavellian femme fatale who twists doomed sap Elisha Cook Jr round her little finger. So much of this film has influenced some of the best directing talent working today that it still feels remarkably contemporary; Tarantino owes much to the over-lapping timeline in particular, and the mix of off beat characters, violent crime and cruel twists of fate is straight out of a Cohen brothers movie (Vince Edwards actually looks the spit of Peter Stormare in this film!) In fact the only element that dates it is the newsreel style voice over, although it does help fit the pieces of puzzle together quite well. Johnny Clay was a brilliant character whom I would have liked to have learned more about, to the point where you are almost sorry to see him caught. But wishing the film was longer is hardly the most damning criticism! Is there any genre Kubrick couldn't do?
  • SirPant
    September 4, 2009
    SirPant
    A fantastic Heist film noir by the late great Kubrick. The dialogue is brilliant and the characters and acting superb. As always, Kubrick's direction is perfect. It's been a huge influence since its realise and has often been ripped off but never bettered. Brilliant.
    PS. Hands o...( read more)ff Tarantino you tea leaf!!
  • 76Majikat
    May 31, 2009
    76Majikat
    A well planned Robbery that is timed accurately and precise, with many characters involved.

    Enjoyable watch, worthy if you catch it on TV, not quite as impressive as I thought it would be, but an ok film.
  • wellmeetagain
    March 1, 2009
    wellmeetagain
    Good early Kubrick. Nice touchs throughout with a satisfying ending. Recommended.
  • FangsFirst
    January 28, 2009
    FangsFirst
    As someone who has more interest in character than spectacle or plot and ideas than visuals as a general rule (but of course not an exclusive one), Stanley Kubrick is an unusual director for me. Obviously many people love the man's work dearly, and I certainly put in my hands and...( read more) vote for the original Warner Kubrick set as one of the first DVDs ever purchased in my household (albeit on the wispy understanding of his historical importance, rather than an appreciation or awareness), though at this point still for my father. I've liked all of his movies I've seen, though I did have to try twice at Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and missed a lot of The Shining, but it has oddly been more about the things listed above as more important to me, completely contrasting with that Kubrick is most often mentioned for, which is his style. I'm a little wary every time I go in to view one of his movies for this fact, expecting something as drawn-out and clinical as 2001: A Space Odyssey every time, but rarely actually seeing that. They do usually end up pretty lengthy though, so I might be the only person who would respond positively to the idea of Kubrick doing film-noir without actually soiling my trousers in the process. He's not my favourite director and likely never will be, but I do like his work anyway.

    Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen), racetrack clerk George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr.), patrolman Randy Kennan (Ted de Corsia), and racetrack bartender Mike O'Reilly (Joe Sawyer) have planned the perfect heist. They all know the racetrack well enough that they've perfected the way to distract the racetrack's detectives enough to free up the money for the taking while drawing the attention of crowds to keep themselves lost in the confusion. Clay is the professional, planning and performing most of the execution, especially the criminal portions. George and Mike are inside men who can put things into position, Unger is the money man who seeds the dough for the extra hands needed--gunman Nikki Arcane (Timothy Carey) and brawler Maurice Oboukhoff (Kola Kwariani)--and Randy, as office of the law, forms an easy shield for some of the actions they need to perform to pull it all off. George's manipulative wife Sherry (Marie Windsor) unintentionally baits George through her usual emasculating abuse into revealing the fact that they are soon to come into money, then pushes further for details. She informs her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) and suggests that they take all this money for themselves. George wants the money to earn the love of his wife, while Mike wants to take care of his sickly wife Ruthie (Dorothy Adams), Randy needs to pay off a debt to Leo the loanshark (Jay Adler), Unger has at least a crush on Johnny (despite the best attempts of some viewers to ignore it or re-write it), and Johnny plans to take his girlfriend Fay (Coleen Gray) away with his cut. Told in a fashion that repeats moments of time through different routes (following Maurice, then Nikki, then Johnny, etc), we see how the crime is carried out--what was prepared for and what wasn't.

    I just got a bit lost in a thread debating the homosexuality of Unger and was utterly confused. I read a similar thread about The Mechanic, which seemed more like wishful thinking for men who think Charles Bronson (or Jan-Michael Vincent) is hot, or from people looking too hard. This one, though? It's right out there. It's almost relaxing that, for once, the inevitable "homosexual subtext" discussion is spot on. Why does this even matter? Because it continues to say something about Kubrick. He never shied away from stories he wanted to tell or methods he wanted to use. He'd be controlled by studios and collaborators on occasion, but his intentions never wavered. If he wanted to do it, he at least tried to do it. Vision is the element Kubrick is most credited for, and this essential credit I whole-heartedly respect. The fact that he makes his choices and sticks by them as best he can is admirable, and that he twists the efforts of studios that won't let him is even more so. When it comes to something less than entertaining (2001 is a bit drawn out for my liking, if memory serves--you'll all know at some point when I re-watch and review it), the film suffers, but never the director. Here Kubrick adapts Lionel White novel The Clean Break, using Jim Thompson's dialogue for Kubrick's own screenplay, allegedly to the letter, or at least to the sentence or paragraph. It's not linear, but not in a Tarantino-esque stylistic way, but in the same way that Kubrick always has an element of the clinical: this is how it is, so this is how he filmed it. There's a coldness to the characters and events, or at least to the eye viewing them--almost colder than the typically dispassionate eye of Eastern directors (like Kurosawa), almost witnessing more in a technical fashion than in a hovering god-like disinterest.

    The focus of the plotting on the perpetration of the crime only reinforces this feeling, with any emotional interference treated as a new mechanical element that affects the overall mechanism of Johnny Clay's plot. When Sherry and Val plot to take the loot from the boys planning it or George gets frustrated with his wife or Nikki unintentionally forms too close a bond with a mark he needs to get in place (a guard played by Herbert Ellis), it's an intruding subplot, not an emotional development. The ironic end of most of these subplots and even the main plot is thoroughly dispassionate, the eye of the camera far more interested in displaying the detailed effects on the character's emotions and on the way the world and its events work than on helping us to feel the disappointment, anger or delight of the characters. Of course, this doesn't prevent Kubrick from instilling a full-on supply of tension to the viewer, with the mystery of the film's clockwork plotting being revealed piecemeal and leaving us always wondering, "So what was participant X doing right then...?" until we learn their acts and move on to the next. What effect will the unfaithful Sherry have on the course of events? Sure, we don't like Sherry or how she treats George (unless we're heartless bastards and dislike George more for being so easily manipulated--but that's not my way), but we're more interested in what this does to their plans than what it does to George. Alongside it we have the technical fluidity of the camera's eye, with shots of Johnny's place that follow along the missing fourth wall to cross from room to room as he paces alongside it, a shot so artificial only Kubrick would try it without blinking.

    What Kubrick notoriously did not want, though, was a narrator. This is actually the only element of the film that doesn't work. While I don't know how it would follow without (since I cannot view it without the narrator and did not look up enough to know the narrator was unwanted before viewing), it's distracting and obnoxious. The narrator, Art Gilmore, sounds like a voice that belongs in an old commercial, designed for perfect enunciation and projection over all else, with no character and no life to it, but not a flat-Dragnet style about it either. It's grossly misplaced by studio insistence and flies in the face of the film it is attached to. Kubrick got his revenge, though, by feeding inaccuracies and falsities through the narrator, just to make it pointless. It's a small comfort, but it's still a comfort, and helps to bring an excellent movie out of the shadow of a stupid addition.*

    *Seriously. Why do studios insist on putting narration on noir? Is it pure coincidence that Blade Runner suffered a similar fate? Are these the only examples? Somehow, I doubt it. But maybe they are.
  • addienairzan
    December 20, 2009
    addienairzan
    The Killing is fantastic. Its very effective, not like most movies nowadays that's wasting celluloid and the audience's time. And the details are great. Sometimes we should look back and really learn something.
  • gordws
    December 13, 2009
    gordws
    This flawless caper movie forces you to root for the bad guy. Classic edge of your seat suspense.
  • StewartMc
    December 10, 2009
    StewartMc
    Classic film noir! Great twists and turns and film techniques that cleary influenced Tarantino, Scorsese and the likes.
  • rayld02
    December 5, 2009
    rayld02
    The Killing is said to be one of Stanley Kubrick's earlier works as a film director. Screenplay was written by Kubrick and James Thompson based on a novel entitled "Clean Break" by Lionel White. It was released in 1956 and was not actually a top grosser but it did well.

    Film Noi...( read more)r

    The Killing is a film noir based on a series of crimes by groups of individuals.

    The Story

    The story basically is about a notorious criminal named Johnny Clay portrayed by Sterling Hayden (he was one of the military officers in the film Dr. Stangelove) and his plans on stealing a huge amount of money from a horse race track bank where tickets earnings from ticket sales and wages are kept. He assembled a team of prospects that are to act as what he had planned. He made careful decisions on how to rob the bank and how to leave no traces of the crime.

    There is no perfect crime.

    Initially, what Johnny had planned was a perfect crime. He would leave no traces of robbing. Brutal and deceiving in nature but they would never get them caught by authorities. Yes. He and his team managed to do everything as what the plans said, and they succeeded. They got the cash, they became popular, because, television kept talking about them and their "marvelous" crime, how they were NOT caught, and how intelligent they were, BUT there's always bad karma. Just watch the movie in good details.

    The last part was pretty hilarious. I never expected it to be that funny.

    The film shows strong characters especially that of Johnny's. It brings us to the matrix of making a crime and it's pretty interesting watching movies like those.

    The film has no linear storylines and it was narrated voice-over eventually. The lights are set to low key black and white. The music, not so impressive, but helps you to feel scenes with intense thrill. The camera angles impressive. Actually, this film is one of those foundations for Kubrick's later films.

    Close to perfect score for a not so perfect crime.
  • 21rclemente
    November 16, 2009
    21rclemente
    I love Kubrick. I should put this near the top of the list but it seems to be a bit of a bore

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Critic Reviews

May 1, 2006
Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

Stanley Kubrick's masterful manipulation of chronology brings an excruciating sense of doom to The Killing, a classical noir about a carefully threaded heist unraveled by the scheming of a fiendish fe... full review

View more The Killing reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

  • R0L0D3X
    June 29, 2009
    R0L0D3X
    Great, Great, Great, Great Film

    8/10
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The Killing Trivia

  • Which "Friday the 13th" had Jason only in a dream sequence, while a copycat "Jason" was doing all the killing?  Answer »
  • This film from the 1950s features a story told out of sequence, a race track robbery and it's in black & white.  Answer »
  • Which Stanley Kubrick film is said to have inspired the convoluted timeline of 'Reservoir Dogs'?  Answer »
  • Which of these films is NOT about the Vietnam war?  Answer »
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