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The Killing Reviews
Stanley Kubrick had made two pictures before this one, but they were juvenilia; this shrewdly worked out suspense film, which he made at the age of 27, is the real beginning of his career.
Written and directed by Hollywood's newest miracle boy, 27-year-old Stanley Kubrick, The Killing is a fascinating exercise in criminal craftsmanship.
This shrewd, engrossing, complete-in-itself melodrama is the kind of film one had begun to think was no longer possible to make in Hollywood.
The Killing may be downbeat (you never met a more callous cast) but it contains some remarkable moviemaking.
The Killing, based on Lionel White's novel, "The Clean Break," has enough suspense in the telling of a well-planned robbery to keep the attention of the Mayfair Theatre audience riveted on the screen.
Were it not so cleverly and tautly put together, The Killing would be merely another item for the leather jacket trade... But the style is more or less the crisp method of the documentary.
Exciting and strong performances are the order of cast business. Hayden is convincing beyond the line of duty. Cook gives the most gripping portrayal as the weakling husband. One of the screen's best actors he is seen too infrequently.
[The Killing], produced by a new Hollywood "boy wonder," 29-year-old Stanley Kubrick, sidesteps most Hollywood crime cliches. Its criminals are not stereotypes, and its plot is full of stunning surprises.
The treatment of the marriage relationship between Miss Windsor and Mr. Elisha Cook can easily be considered a masterpiece in itself. It is a compelling study of the corrupt leading the easily corruptible down a crooked, sex-ridden alley.
In essence merely another treatment of the crime-doesn't-pay theme, The Killing reworks into a gripping and imaginative pattern a collection of characters and situations often encountered in screen recounting of lawless forays.
Kubrick may be an artist in the cinema but he never forgets his duty to entertain. And as an entertainer he is astoundingly good.
The thinness of the plot is almost, but not quite, covered by the cast playing an odd assortment of unattractive characters.
Produced on what Hollywood terms a shoestring, and filmed in less than a month, it has packed into its one and a half hours more satisfying suspense than is apt to be found in a far more pretentious production.
Good of its kind, The Killing has the realistic flavor of a documentary. It also shows how much brainwork and ingenuity that might be better be used for lawful pursuits is expended by crooks in planning a big operation.
Director Kubrick must have been kept busier than King Farouk at Monte Carlo as he directed the sub plots and merged them with the central theme. And the gamble couldn't have been much greater.
It is one of those crime movies where you find yourself, in spite of all your principles, rooting for the crooks to get away with it.
Lucien Ballard's camera work is as gripping as the ironic action.
Kubrick, whose first feature film venture, Fear and Desire, marked him as a director-producer to be watched, has delivered a masterly job this time.
[The Killing] proves, among other things, that you can't always judge a package by its wrapping. For beneath this unpretentious exterior, you'll find one of the dandiest little screen plays of the year.
In its modest way, a little melodrama called The Killing hits the target with a lot louder thump than many of the bigger glossier members of the tribe do with their fancier resources.