• The Killing

7/30/23 (Sun)

Stanley Kubrick’s 1956 film was his third feature (though he refuses to acknowledge the first, like Biden’s seventh grandchild) but the first to gather some acclaim, at least critically if not commercially. He’s credited with the screenplay, but Jim Thompson seems to have contributed the key dialogue and cynical tone of the characters.

Johnny (Sterling Hayden) comes out of a five-year prison stretch immediately plotting one last heist before his retirement, aiming to relieve a racetrack of $2 million in bets (“Five years have taught me one thing, if nothing else: Anytime you take a chance, you better be sure the rewards are worth the risk. Because they could put you away just as fast for a $10 heist as they can for a million dollar job”). That starts proceedings off with a bang. He gathers a team of insiders and concocts a scheme in which the lead horse will be shot (preventing the winnings from being paid out), a man will cause a fight in the bar (allowing another to slip unnoticed into the back room), the cash will be taken at gunpoint from the betting area, and a truck will quickly take the cash away. Trouble arises when one of the co-conspirators blabs to his wife, who immediately calls upon her lover to steal the money for themselves. The end result is not pretty, forcing Johnny to attempt to spirit the cash away by plane. That effort comes undone in a most ingenious way. The dispirited Johnny doesn’t even try to get away at that point, shrugging, “What’s the difference?”

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