User Reviews

Stanley Kubrick's mid '50s coming-out party is a startlingly accurate prediction of cinema's future. By way of a non-linear narration and a few remarkably fresh transitions, Kubrick adds weight and magnitude to a tangled heist tale and its focus on the crooks behind the slick, daring stickup of a local racetrack. Confused by the film's radical new approach to storytelling, test audiences hated the first cut, leading to studio meddling and an almost-complete evaporation of its marketing budget. Kubrick fought back, though, and with the obvious exception of a horribly heavy-handed, deadpan narration, the finished product seems virtually unblemished. Mostly concerned with the planning and hand-wringing before the big theft, The Killing slowly builds tension and anticipation before finally boiling over in a machine gun-paced robbery scene, terse payoff and all-too-brief elaboration on the major players' ultimate fates. Acceptably acted at best, the real stars of this picture are the complex plot and the harvest of fresh ideas going on behind the lens. A clear inspiration for Tarantino's big hits of the '90s, it's a daring and stylish major market debut for the famed director that hints at the directions his development would ultimately carry the medium.

Un polar minutieusement détaillé et bien construit qui m’a fait penser à ‘Ocean 11’ mais avec quelques participants en moins… Le démarrage reste lent cependant et quelques bavardages particulièrement inutiles et rasoirs viennent alourdir cette belle mécanique, par ailleurs filmée consciencieusement par Kubrick mais sans génie : ne pas s’attendre à sa maestria des films suivants. A ce sujet, quel contraste avec ‘Les Sentiers de la Gloire’ sorti l’année d’après ! On note la présence dans le rôle-titre de Sterling Hayden très convaincant ici et qui le sera encore plus (dans un petit rôle certes mais très percutant) dans l’inénarrable ‘Docteur Folamour’ des années plus ****… Assurément très sérieux, ce polar n’a donc rien de bien extraordinaire si ce n’est… sa fin d’une ironie inattendue ! on retrouve là le Kubrick narquois et sardonique à souhait. Quelle fin, mes aïeux, elle sauve le film ! (ou presque).

This was expertly and smartly executed, a tight and good blueprint for heist movies to come.

I enjoyed this movie every minute. It is a classic heist story with some good characters with their own backgrounds, but also some weak characters that you can foresee how they will end. Anyway it was a good idea not to reveal everything of the heist plan until the end, so there is still something to learn until then. Sterling Hayden as Johnny was perfect.