The Killing

Legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s gripping account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest, twistiest noirs. When ex-con Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden, who later played it for laughs in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove) says he has a plan to make a killing, everybody wants to be in on the action. Especially when the plan is to steal $2 million in a racetrack robbery scheme in which “no one will get hurt.” But despite all their careful plotting, Clay and his men have overlooked one thing: Sherry Peatty (the great Marie Windsor), a money-hungry, double-crossing dame who’s planning to make a financial killing of her own … even if she has to wipe out Clay’s entire gang to do it!  Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative that influenced later films like Reservoir Dogs, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson, and a phenomenal cast of character actors, including Coleen Gray, Timothy Carey, and Elisha Cook Jr., The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony, it’s Kubrick to the core. (Dir. by Stanley Kubrick, 1956, USA, 84 mins., Not Rated)