Best movie of this year hands down!

You won't be disappointed!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This opens atmospherically, then leads into a plot overcooked by several hours. Well filmed in black and white of course, it has a beautiful look for much of its running time. Edmond O'Brien who should be named as the lead as he has the most screen time and carries us along the plot is good, no better, Burt Lancaster in his first screen role is wooden or overacting, Ava Gardner is similarly poor and the rest of the cast just pass muster. Very overrated. If you want great noir try Murder My Sweet, This Gun For Hire or The Maltese Falcon, but this'll pass the time for you while looking good; no better than that.

Fantastic first twenty minutes, great performance from Burt Lancaster in his first role and fine ending. But there is a problem. From the very start, pre-credit sequence even, there a deep black shadows and ominous shapes and once in the diner there is sharp dialogue to match. Based upon a Hemingway story and all is most promising even if we loose our star so early on. But Hemingway only wrote a short story. From here on in the film makers had to improvise a back story, reputedly mainly the work of John Huston the expansion is formed of flashbacks. Lots of them, probably a dozen and there is a chance of us losing interest. We get more Lancaster and Ava Gardner but it is Edmond O'Brien who is expected to carry the film and he does not have the required charisma. Nor the required dialogue. It is a tightly enough told tale but there are lapses in believability and by the end, I didn't really care.

I am increasingly becoming a bigger fan of noir, still rather new to this genre even though I love classic movies and have seen my fair share of them. I love the intense build-up of this movie in the very beginning, that diner scene is really something! I was just talking to a customer at my workplace about the movie and I told her that if I ever decide to get into the food business, I'd want to open a diner just like the one in The Killers. What a lot of movies today lack is a very good storyline. Sadly with the advancement of CGI, the amount put into creating a very strong storyline in a movie has declined over the years. The old classic Hollywood glamour rarely exists in today's movies as well. This is something that I hope that Hollywood would bring back one day.Black and white movies certainly teach you how to really appreciate the story, and how to appreciate the cinematography of black and white film. Noir can't be replicated in color like it was done in the 1940's because there was more that added to the films other than being in black and white. There was the style and sex appeal of the characters, this is very evident in Ava Gardner's role as the main femme fatale in the movie. Although film noir focuses on the female sex appeal, there is certainly sex appeal in the male characters as well. I definitely found this in Edmond O'Brian's portrayal of the main detective. Very dashing, handsome, and masculine. I do wish that they would give Ava Gardener a more lengthy song to perform like they did in Dark Passage with Lauren Bacall.Ernest Hemmingway certainly scored my interest in continuing to read his writing with this one. After seeing the movie, I made sure to buy the collection of Hemmingway's short stories. If you are new to film noir or just thinking about getting into classic movies seriously, I'd recommend starting with this one.

Incredibly an exciting beginning of a movie. The murderers who kill without explanation and victim calmly awaits death. THE KILLERS is out of sync movie, which does not affect much on a very good story and a solid noir atmosphere. Flashbacks are chronologically nonlinear, are manifold, but are quite clear. Most attract attention, because the reconstruction of the victim's life. Looking at the other side, they are only an attempt to illuminate the case in which the robbed factory. The heart of the story is certainly not an insurance investigator. He is only an intermediary.The story is quite complicated and tense. Therefore, conclusions can be multiple. Why man quietly waiting for its own liquidation? For love or fraud. The victim of femme fatale or just a criminal who fell in love with the wrong woman.One of the protagonists patiently solve the mystery. He waits until all the attributes are not in his hands. Burt Lancaster as Pete Lund/Ole "Swede" Andreson is handsome and muscular actor who in all solid pace. For the first important role quite decent. Although I think it director spared some embarrassment. Several times he was close. Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins was prickly as a femme fatale. The lady who cut the flow of the story. Although I was fascinated by her beauty, I have not regretted the fate of her character at the end of the film. Edmond O'Brien as Jim Reardon is cunning, cold and relentless investigator in the style of a real detective. On one side is a bad copy of the Bogart, on the other hand the result of the popularity of such characters in film noir.The film has a slow tempo with a lot of uncertainty and tension. The sharp dialogues, gloomy atmosphere and fatalistic tone determined work on which the movie is based.