The Killing
The Killing
NR | 06 June 1956 (USA)
The Killing Trailers

Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.

Reviews
Cebalord

Very best movie i ever watch

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InformationRap

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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Frances Chung

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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Lucia Ayala

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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Fletcher Conner

The Killing is one of Kubrick's early films before he really broke out with Paths of Glory and Spartacus, but the talent is evident. The film is a very straightforward concept, a heist at a horse track, but it lays out the blueprint for making a heist film that is still used today with the Ocean's series. They lay out their plan just enough that the viewer knows what is going on and the general outline of the plan, but it isn't until the climactic heist that it all comes together. The decision to show the heist from each characters perspective non-linearly worked very well and was a bold choice at the time as it was a novel approach.Sterling Hayden gives a good performance, though it is odd to see him as the mastermind when he is usually just typecast as a heavy. Elisha Cook Jr. also does well as the meek clerk who is pushed around by his two timing wife. The characters are given moments of compassion, particularly Joe Sawyer's bartender, to let the audience root for them, while still reminding us that they are criminals.

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MarelleK

Oh my goodness, wow, thank You, Stanley Kubrick! I finally watched it and most certainly will watch over and over again.. Throughout the movie, it was so intense, never once you get bored! Great dialogue and storyline. It is truly the best heist movie ever. And the ending.. I always love a movie with a great punch line and this one has it.. to plan something so brilliant and then to have a dog ruin it.. I'm amazed. About actors, loved very much Marie Windsor's character in the movie, as well with Sterling Hayden. I also love how the storyteller talks in the movie, with exact details of time and schedules. It is a well made film with strong theme and meaning.

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Sidster3

"The Killing" (1956) certainly deserves its title. It is honestly "Ocean's Eleven" before there was an "Ocean's Eleven", but it is not nearly as good. The use of shadow in the film added to the mystery of it all and the flashbacks helped tie everything together without giving too much away. This movie wasn't horrible to watch but, it's certainly not my favorite. It had the potential to be really good, but the lack of humor, depth, and drama held it back. The plot was decent, but it could have been flushed out more. I honestly wonder if the costume designers and makeup artists created Sherry's look based off of Betty Boop. George Peatty, played by Elisha Cook Jr., was such a sucker. I felt bad for the guy at the beginning, but when you see how he has no back bone you just wanna smack the guy and tell him to wake up and smell the coffee.

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sandnair87

The Killing is a smart-ass heist drama - a noir of the highest order - with a lip-smacking precision which is at odds with the summation: that all human designs are futile and frustrating. Stanley Kubrick's 84-minute labyrinthine thriller transports the moral contortions of film noir to the overwrought atmosphere of the race-track, suffusing them together with dread-inducing temporal uncertainty. The Killing is a story of a group of low-level hoods that hops around a heist at a race track, viewing the events from the perspective of the men involved. Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden, competently thumping a restrained characterization), just released from a 5-year stint in prison, instigates the operation, recruiting inside men from the track like bartender Mike, book-keeper Marvin, and clerk George (Elisha Cook, a particular standout), along with corrupt policeman Randy Kennan to orchestrate the daring heist. Each represents a specific role in the intricate process, a key piece to the overall puzzle which is deliberated over through clandestine meetings. Our unlikely schemers all believe their newly acquired riches will salvage whatever opportunities they've previously squandered. But as in most film noir, here too a dame holds the key to doom. The weak-willed George naively believes the money will satisfy his wide-eyed viper of a wife, Sherry (spectacularly portrayed by Marie Windsor). Her passive-aggressive interrogations are ripe with assaults on George's nonexistent masculinity, and what begins as idle pillow talk quickly avalanches into full-blown disaster. Overall the plot works like clock-work; drawing us into the scheme and then milking the pleasures of witnessing it unfold exactly as planned. Well almost! The movie soon settles into a thrilling vein culminating into an unexpected and brutally ironic climax as the group's hard-earned cash literally blows away - a compelling image of great symbolic value that visually mirrors early images of the racetrack grounds littered with losing tickets. Kubrick holds the image for maximum impact, and the look on Hayden's face is a deft summary of film noir's intrinsic fatalism: all are doomed, and the only question is how.It is a tremendous pleasure to see how it all unfolds, largely because Kubrick directs it with the skill of a consummate pro (despite being all of 27 years old then). Kubrick's structuring of the material makes it a brisk film noir, moving us around the narrative like an unassembled jigsaw puzzle that slowly but surely comes together in the end, but never in the way we might expect it. And by doing so, he propels the acidic realm of film noir into something even darker!

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