Film: The Killing

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Genre: Crime Thriller
Source: USA (1956)
Rating: Unrated (probably PG/PG-13)
Location/Format: Blu-ray
Grade: A-

Two minutes in to this movie I didn't think I would like it. The overbearing, Dragnet-like narrator was a real turn-off, and it struck me initially as relying a bit much on the 50s style archetypes of the characters--Marie Windsor, for example, lays it on a bit thick as Sherry. I didn't see the purpose of the clunky, disjointed timeline, and I thought the whole movie was shaping up to be a bit of a mess.

Boy, was I wrong.

Sharp, smart, and bursting with irony, the careful build up to the heist itself allows us as an audience to know exactly how all the pieces are falling into place, and those last twenty minutes or so are dynamite, tense and satisfying and tough in a way that sets the framework for crime movies to come, from The Sting to Reservoir Dogs to Inside Man. Even at this early outing, Kubrick doesn't waste any film. It's easy to see why this film would be homaged by future filmmakers, from Tarantino to Nolan. I always thought the masks in The Dark Knight opening robbery were just a play on the Joker character, but now I see it's almost the same mask as Kubrick uses. I never knew!

There's a bleakness to the film that I didn't expect as well. The film's last line, "Eh, what's the difference?" delivered so softly and in the midst of such a caustic swirl of action, in some ways reframes the entire movie as a nihilistic allegory. It comes as a slap in the face, given all Sterling Hayden's character has so carefully planned and organized throughout the film, and it's a jolt to the system. That irony had been played before of course--that horseshoe!--but never as powerfully as in those last few minutes.

Kubrick movies always strike me as a little cold, and The Killing is no different, but in the end that coldness and that procedural framework really brought the film together in fascinating ways. I'm still dissatisfied with the voice-over narration, but this is still a movie that rocked me.

Alternate Film Title: "Red Lightning, We Hardly Knew You"