The Killing

Very enjoyable classic, in the same class as 'Double Indemnity' and the original 'The Postman always Rings Twice'. I don't see how it can be given less than 5 stars.

You need to see this film.

A gang of hard up low lives stage a bold armed robbery at the races. The execution is all clockwork professionalism, the aftermath an unsightly and disastrous bloodbath, as gang members proceed to anihilate each other in a frenzy of double cross and betrayal. Cherchez la femme... Starring the incomparable Sterling Hayden, whose contempt for his own profession has never been put to better use, this is Stanley Kubrick's magisterial lesson in the gangster genre film laced with Film Noir aesthetics. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent: I have lost count of the number of times Warner Bros stalwart Elisha Cook Jr. died an inglorious, violent death in the studio films of the era but this one's got to be his most undignified exit and, of course, a most memorable moment of pure cinema. This was veteran cinematographer Lucien Ballard's 68th film and his grasp of noir lighting atmospherics was an assured match for Kubrick's stark, nihilistic vision. The Killing amply deserves joint credit alongside Jules Dassin's Riffifi as the movie that set the genre's gold standard for generations of film makers to come. Michael Mann and Christopher Nolan would - I am sure - delight in acknowledging their debt.