"The Killers" obviously owes a lot to "The Asphalt Jungle" of four years earlier, and also reflects the influence of the kind of semi-documentary post-war intrigues that Henry Hathaway and some others made -- "The House on 92nd Street", for instance -- with their baritone narrations and emphasis on clockwork precision. It isn't quite what we think of as a Kubrik film yet. The lighting, for example, doesn't seem to emanate from such strange sources as the floor, and there is still genuine emotion being shown on screen, a real sense of humanity, rather than its near absence.
All that aside, it's an involving story of a complicated race track heist with a first-rate cast. Marie Windsor, as the treacherous adulteress, is sexy and gorgeous. (I kind of find Ileana Douglas interesting too.) Coleen Gray has less time on screen but is likewise sexy and gorgeous, but in a much more housewifely way. Yipes, what a nearly perfect face, full of excellent bone structure. It could have come from noplace but Nebraska. You can imagine Gray as once having been a virgin whereas the Windsor character seems to have been born debauched.
The men are equally good. Sterling Hayden, the human monolith whose career ranks right up there in the first rank of the second rate. He was more interested in his yacht than his vocation, which he thought was silly. Elisha Cook, Jr., the schmuck, taken advantage of and repeatedly humiliated, yet again. Ted DeCorsia as a reliably corrupt cop, for him a role filled with decorum. Vince Edwards as a non-acting sleazy gigolo. A hairy mountainous Greek wrestler with some lines that reek of pomposity. (He's a chess aficionado; maybe that accounts for it.) Joe Sawyer as the low-echelon participant with a sick wife. (As I said, it harks back to "The Asphalt Jungle.") Timothy Carey as a racist equinocide who gets what's coming to him for using the "N" word. Then there's Jay C. Flippen in the complex role of the financier. It's "complex" because I've seen this film a dozen times but only tonight did I pay any real attention to the scene in which Flippen and Hayden part for the last time. Flippen has been an aw-shucks kind of softy throughout, but in this scene he tells Hayden that Hayden is like a son to him and proposes a trip around the world for just the two of them -- "Let the old world take a couple of spins" -- which today sounds suspiciously like a gay come on. Hayden however doesn't seem to catch any undertones and his departure is no more than friendly, but the camera lingers on Flippen's expression of extreme disappointment after Hayden has gone.
I understand the movie had to be re-edited to make the narrative clearer but although some of the scenes overlap in time I didn't have any trouble following it. The plot is pretty clever, with no more than the usual number of holes in it. (One shotgun blast and one pistol shot and half a dozen people are turned into mincemeat.) It's an enjoyable movie with an ironic ending -- all that cash flying around in the prop wash, caused by some snotty lady's tiny and deformed dog -- but one supposes the moral code called for crime not to pay in 1956. I'm all for the punishment of thieves and murderers but I wanted to make a grab for all those bills floating about.
All that aside, it's an involving story of a complicated race track heist with a first-rate cast. Marie Windsor, as the treacherous adulteress, is sexy and gorgeous. (I kind of find Ileana Douglas interesting too.) Coleen Gray has less time on screen but is likewise sexy and gorgeous, but in a much more housewifely way. Yipes, what a nearly perfect face, full of excellent bone structure. It could have come from noplace but Nebraska. You can imagine Gray as once having been a virgin whereas the Windsor character seems to have been born debauched.
The men are equally good. Sterling Hayden, the human monolith whose career ranks right up there in the first rank of the second rate. He was more interested in his yacht than his vocation, which he thought was silly. Elisha Cook, Jr., the schmuck, taken advantage of and repeatedly humiliated, yet again. Ted DeCorsia as a reliably corrupt cop, for him a role filled with decorum. Vince Edwards as a non-acting sleazy gigolo. A hairy mountainous Greek wrestler with some lines that reek of pomposity. (He's a chess aficionado; maybe that accounts for it.) Joe Sawyer as the low-echelon participant with a sick wife. (As I said, it harks back to "The Asphalt Jungle.") Timothy Carey as a racist equinocide who gets what's coming to him for using the "N" word. Then there's Jay C. Flippen in the complex role of the financier. It's "complex" because I've seen this film a dozen times but only tonight did I pay any real attention to the scene in which Flippen and Hayden part for the last time. Flippen has been an aw-shucks kind of softy throughout, but in this scene he tells Hayden that Hayden is like a son to him and proposes a trip around the world for just the two of them -- "Let the old world take a couple of spins" -- which today sounds suspiciously like a gay come on. Hayden however doesn't seem to catch any undertones and his departure is no more than friendly, but the camera lingers on Flippen's expression of extreme disappointment after Hayden has gone.
I understand the movie had to be re-edited to make the narrative clearer but although some of the scenes overlap in time I didn't have any trouble following it. The plot is pretty clever, with no more than the usual number of holes in it. (One shotgun blast and one pistol shot and half a dozen people are turned into mincemeat.) It's an enjoyable movie with an ironic ending -- all that cash flying around in the prop wash, caused by some snotty lady's tiny and deformed dog -- but one supposes the moral code called for crime not to pay in 1956. I'm all for the punishment of thieves and murderers but I wanted to make a grab for all those bills floating about.