Review: The Killing

Stanley Kubrick's The Killing is a blisteringly taut decimation of post-World War II entitlement.

The Killing
Photo: Photofest

Every split second counts at the racetrack, where fortunes are won and lost in as much time and the smallest decisions are charged with intensity. The Killing, a blisteringly taut decimation of post-World War II entitlement, understands this better than perhaps any other crime film. Stanley Kubrick’s third feature transports the moral contortions of noir to the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the track, infusing it all with a dread-inducing uncertainty.

The 1956 film employs a sobering, almost clinical voiceover to chart the progress of a robbery at a Los Angeles racetrack, introducing each low-level hood and unlikely schemer’s motivations. The narrator speaks in the past tense, almost as if these men were ghosts foolishly trying to change what’s already been predetermined. Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), just released from a five-year stint in prison, instigates the operation, recruiting inside men like bartender Mike O’Reilly (Joe Sawyer), bookkeeper Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen), and clerk George Peatty (Elisha Cook), along with corrupt policeman Randy Kennan (Ted DeCorsia), to orchestrate the heist. Each represents a specific role in the intricate process, a key piece to the overall puzzle. How they fit together and break apart becomes Kubrick’s core interest.

The men of The Killing all believe that their newly acquired riches will make up for all the opportunities that they’ve previously squandered. Johnny needs the cash to run away with his innocent lover, Fay (Coleen Gray); Mike hopes to use his cut to cure his sickly wife; and Randy intends to free himself from a brutal loan shark. Everything goes according to plan, except the weak-willed George, naïvely believing that the money will prevent his wife, Sherry (Marie Windsor), from leaving him, told her about the plan, after which she enlists her lover, Val Cannon (Vince Edwards), to steal the money from George and his fellow conspirators. Sherry’s 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.

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In the heist film, any one character’s faith in the group can dissolve in favor of self-survival at a moment’s notice. Early on, Randy warns, “I’ll take care of myself. That’s my specialty.” And as the mistakes pile up, making a once carefully modulated plan on paper turn to dust, The Killing constantly threatens to fulfill such genre conventions. But Kubrick withholds the expectation of capture, betrayal, or death until the last possible moment, juxtaposing the bullying and brilliant dialogue sequences with hypnotically fluid long takes through clogged interior spaces. Given the precision of the film’s aesthetics, the explosions of violence are that much more startling, as in the scene where former wrestler Maurice (Kola Kwariani) starts a brawl in the track common area, taking on a platoon of cops in the process, or the one where Johnny watches Nikki Arcane (Timothy Care) shred a paper target with automatic shotgun fire.

Lucien Ballard’s cinematography is a wonder of texture and shadow play. From Johnny’s overconfidence during a roundtable planning session to Sherry’s tragic underestimations of George, everyone’s fatal flaw is practically amplified by the resonant dimensions of the film’s lighting and compositions. Set inside the cavernous maze of the racetrack infrastructure, the robbery itself plays out as a nearly wordless and always gripping example of narrative misdirection. Johnny dons a clown mask, pulls a shotgun out of a flower box, and patiently waits for a moment to pounce. His house of cards seems set up perfectly for success, but the scales quickly tip against him, and the sequence becomes a panicked sprint to the finish line, much like the horse race unfolding in the background. All the while, the track announcer’s play by play makes for a fitting parallel to the central breakneck robbery.

Symbolism and pungent irony also abound throughout The Killing, as when George, stumbling out of Johnny’s apartment late in the film, his face pockmarked with buck shot, is understood as the horrific personification of the aforementioned paper target. Elsewhere, Kubrick’s wicked brand of jet-black irony is evident after George shoots Sherry and her parrot stars squawking loudly, essentially sounding her death knell. But it’s the final image of an ocean of cash blowing in the wind that best echoes the uncontrollable and unseen machinations working against the film’s desperate characters. Despite their collective hope for the future, they will always be puppets, no matter how hard each tries to cut the strings of fate.

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Score: 
 Cast: Sterling Hayden, Elisha Cook, Marie Windsor, Ted DeCorsia, Joe Sawyer, Jay C. Flippen, Val Cannon, Coleen Gray, Kola Kwariani  Director: Stanley Kubrick  Screenwriter: Stanley Kubrick  Distributor: Park Circus  Running Time: 85 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1956  Buy: Video

Glenn Heath Jr.

Glenn Heath's writing has appeared in Cineaste, The Notebook, Little White Lies, and The Film Stage.

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