This early effort from the late Stanley Kubrick is a caper film about a racetrack
heist in which each member of the heist team has a specific role to play, and all
the roles have to be executed in exact synchronization with each other for the operation
to work. Johnny Clay (Hayden), an ex-con, is the brains of the gang, rounding up
a crew of non-criminals to pull off the job and split the money. The flashback is
a familiar device in film noir and crime dramas; however, The Killing uses
multiple flashbacks to show the role of each member (as Resevoir Dogs would
later on) as the clock counts down to the crucial moment when all the winnings are
in the counting room and Johnny bursts in wielding a shotgun. A shot of draught horses
pulling the starting gate into position is used again and again as a time reference
to illustrate how each member of the crew does his job, eventually fitting all the
pieces together like a puzzle. The plan begins to fall apart, however, when Sherry
Peatty (Windsor), wife of the browbeaten teller, spills the beans to her boyfriend
Vic (Edwards), and he comes to the rendezvous point with his henchmen to make off
with the loot and a shootout ensues. Though the movie is based on the novel Clean
Break, by Lionel White, the credits read "Dialogue by Jim Thompson,"
and the plot certainly bears all the fatalistic earmarks of one of Thompson's novels;
a ragged cast of antihero misfits who are eventually brought down by their own avarice.
Kubrick's camerawork was well on the way to finding the fluid style of his later
work, and the sparse, low-budget circumstances give the film a raw, urgent sort of
look. As good as the story and direction are, though, the true strength of The
Killing lies in the characters and characterizations. Timothy Carey plays Nikki,
the weird, stoned-acting, near-beatnik sniper hired to shoot a horse during the race
as a diversion; Elisha Cook Jr. uses his slightly bug-eyed, hangdog mien to great
advantage as the timid teller George Peatty; Kola Kwarian is the intellectual, chess-playing
wrestler who starts a riot; Sterling Hayden is at his flinty best as the ringleader
of the group. Marie Windsor is purely treacherous, tempting, traitorous trouble (all
with a capital "T") as Sherry Peatty (according to Marie, Kubrick saw her
performance in The Narrow Margin and said, "That's my Sherry").
James Ellroy said, "perfectly planned heists go bad because daring heist men
are self-destructive losers playing out their parts in a preordained endgame with
authority." 'Nuff said.
--Mike Emery
Other Films by Stanley Kubrick
A Clockwork Orange 
Dr. Strangelove 
Eyes Wide Shut 
Lolita 
Paths of Glory 
The Shining 
Film Vault Suggested Links
Double Indemnity 
Mulholland Falls 
Touch of Evil 
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