Stanley Kubrick's The Killing: A style of filmmaking that made Tarantino famous

* * * * * (out of 5)

Turner Classic Movies is a treasure trove of early filmmaking history. They specialize in the black and white movie and while some have a problem with that, those of us who had at least one B/W TV in the house growing up, barely notice the difference. I've seen chunks of The Killing before, but never the whole thing. Last week I Tivoed it and last night I treated myself to an 11PM viewing of it. For me, a B/W movie is best viewed late at night, because it conjures up memories of the late late movies I used to watch with my mother.

Sterling Hayden stars as Johnny Clay, a lifetime criminal who has good ideas, but bad luck. He just got out of the "can" and hatched another great idea while in there. This time he will rob a race track during the biggest race of the year. He figures the back room will be flush with cash and if he can somehow get it out of there, then he and his partners will be rich forever. Hayden is a big tough-looking sonofagun, who played the bad cop that Al Pacino shot years later in The Godfather. I love his character's wife's name too, Fay Clay.

He gathers a team of non-criminals, who the police should never suspect would be involved with a crime. All inside guys with frustrations and baggage, who need the "dough" to sort their lives out. But as we know time and again about heist movies, that if you involve more than two people, well the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Who's the weak link here? The track bartender with the sick wife? The cop who is looking to retire? The moneyman who hates gamblers? Or the track window clerk with the spoiled, pretty wife he's trying to impress?

Add a bear of a Russian wrestler and a sharpshooting Mafia hitman (who could be John Turturro's father) and you have the makings of a great crime caper, perhaps one of the best ever. What makes it so great is not necessarily the genius of the robbery, but the way the story is retold several times from the different characters' points of view. The way the time line is pushed forward and then brought back had to be very confusing to the viewers back in 1956, as was the case for people seeing Pulp Fiction for the first time in 1994. This is definitely a movie that gets better with each viewing. Stanley Kubrick was only in his 20s when he made it and that he was such a self-assured filmmaker at such a young age, points to his genius. From what I've read, this was the first movie that played with the timeline like this, which is even more remarkable. Quentin Tarantino owes Kubrick maybe not his entire career, but many of the accolades he's garnered for being "original" over the years.

This movie was based on a pulp fiction novel (Clean Break) and Kubrick wrote this script with the help of pulp fiction novelist extraordinaire, Jim Thompson. Thompson write the book that inspired the great movie The Grifters. The dialogue flirts with the whole noir, "dame" genre that I'm a fan of, but somehow feels fresh here. Maybe the level of acting is better than in most potboilers of its time. I'm usually against that kind of writing, but it is handled more subtly here than in say a Sam Spade film. Plus, without even realizing it there are many long junctures where there is very little dialogue, mostly because the action is so engrossing and the narration carries you along during the bumpy spots. Like I knew Clay was released from Alcatraz, but didn't realize the film took place in San Francisco until nearly the end. It doesn't matter, because the city is not much of an issue. The low-budget film takes place mostly indoors. Which helps a lot, because rarely in these older films do you see the criminals feeling the claustrophobic pressure of their impending crime like you do here.

Other than Spartacus, I don't know another Kubrick film that told a story as straightforward after this and that's a shame. Sometimes directors like musicians, spend so much time killing themselves making the big magnum opus, when people would just love a perfect three minute pop song.

If there is a false step in this film, I didn't notice it.

The Freditor