The Killers . Austin Chronicle . 07-27-98

The Killers

DIRECTED BY: Robert Siodmak

REVIEWED: 07-27-98

Was it painter Edwin Hopper or some forgotten film noir cinematographer who first showed us that an all-night diner isn't a place where you get coffee and breakfast but the last way station on the way to hell? It doesn't matter. What matters is that when hit men Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (William Conrad) enter that diner at the beginning of The Killers and ask the cook about the Swede (Burt Lancaster), we know that the Swede's chances of catching tomorrow morning's edition of The Today Show are about as good as those of an ass gasket in a hurricane. The Swede is an ex-boxer, hiding in a small town under an alias after doing something that made somebody mad enough to "pencil" him. Although he's warned, the Swede awaits his brutal, inevitable fate with saintly passivity. His story is gradually and artfully deconstructed by insurance agent Riordan (Edmund O'Brien), the perfect sort of Forties icon who would puzzle over the same why's and how's that tear at the viewer. First red light: The Swede once fell for a beauty named Kitty Collins, played by Ava Gardner. Uh-oh, game over. We know what Ava has done to other men. Burt was a hunk of steaming granite, but how could we expect him to have fared any better than Old Blue Eyes? Man is doomed, but it makes for great art, which eases the pain. That's why Sinatra songs sound so good in all-night diners.

--Jesse Sublett

Film Vault Suggested Links
Touch of Evil
The Port of New York
Union Station

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