Based on a paperback crime novel by Lionel White titled Clean Break, which had previously attracted the interest of Frank Sinatra, The Killing takes us deep inside the inner workings of a complex $2 million heist being spearheaded by Hayden’s Johnny Clay, a tough, consummate professional criminal. The heist involves stealing all the cash from the Lansdowne Stakes racetrack in the middle of the day while it is filled with thousands of spectators, which requires more than half a dozen men, including several who work at the track, to fulfill specific roles at specific times. Kubrick, who adapted the novel and hired pulp novelist Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside) to write the gritty dialogue, structures the film in classic noir fashion, beginning at the racetrack on the day of the heist and then bringing us back in time to introduce all the major characters and establish piece by piece how the job will be pulled off. Kubrick’s elaborate temporal structuring--which rewinds time and replays events from different perspectives rather than cross-cutting in typical suspense fashion--has a push-and-pull effect, moving us around the narrative like an unassembled jigsaw puzzle that slowly but surely comes together in the end, but never in the way we might expect it.

Granted, we can sense trouble and where it might boil over, particularly in the case of George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr.), a cashier at the track who plays a crucial role in the heist. A meek and insecure man, he is constantly browbeaten by his emotionally manipulative wife Sherry (Marie Windsor), who pressures him into telling her about the job and then takes that information to her lover, a young hood named Val (Vince Edwards). George’s involvement in the heist is driven by his pathetic desperation to please Fay, with makes it so cruelly ironic that she plans to double-cross him. George is not the only desperate one, however. In one way or another, all of the men working on the heist are at some kind of edge, including Randy Kennan (Ted de Corsia), a police officer who is deep in debt to a vicious loan shark (Jay Adler), and Mike O’Reilly (Joe Sawyer), a bartender at the track who has a terminally sick wife for whom he cannot afford medical care. These relatable problems humanizes the criminals and exacerbates our tension in watching the job go down while knowing that somehow it will go wrong. This was, after all, still the era of the Production Code when crime in a Hollywood film could not pay, and Kubrick uses that to his advantage, playing up the fatalistic nature of the crime’s undoing via both human failure (George telling his wife) and simple dumb luck (best exemplified in a “lucky” horseshoe effectively causing in someone’s death).

Despite this only being his third feature and his first with a significant budget, Kubrick displays many of the thematic preoccupations and visual traits that would come to define his unique, cinematic voice. The film’s overall look is clearly indebted to previous film noir, with its dark, claustrophobic interiors and chiaroscuro lighting, but Kubrick makes it his own with finely wrought compositions and elegant tracking shots that emphasize the pressure of real time (you can feel the influence of both Max Ophuls and the legendary crime photography Weegee). Those who have seen his later films will notice that many elements of The Killing are foreshadows of great moments to come, whether it be the lengthy tracking shots through the trenches in Paths of Glory (1957), the unforgettable image of the circular lighting over the war room in Dr. Strangelove (1964), or the phallic mask Alex wears in A Clockwork Orange (1971), which is presaged by the uncanny hobo mask Johnny dons during the robbery. Kubrick had already worked out the kinks in his filmmaking in his previous two features, thus The Killing feels like the work of a consummate pro.

There are a few narrative hiccups here and there--I, for one, never believed that someone as thorough and calculating as Johnny wouldn’t be aware that airlines have a size limit on carry-on luggage and that he would become so flustered at the last minute--but overall the plot works like clockwork, drawing us into the scheme and then milking the pleasures of watching it unfold exactly as planned--at first, anyway. “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men,” as poet Robert Burns wrote, and this one certainly goes astray, culminating in one of the most brutally ironic moments in all of Kubrick’s films as the group’s hard-earned cash literally blows away--a potent image of great symbolic value that visually mirrors earlier images of the racetrack grounds littered with losing tickets. Kubrick holds the image for maximum impact, and the look on Hayden’s face is a deft summary of film noir’s inherent fatalism--all are doomed, and the only question is how (the fact that we are clearly meant to feel for Johnny is a reminder that Kubrick is not the misanthrope he is often painted as, but rather a humanist who recognizes and is drawn to the uglier ironies of life). It is not surprising that The Killing was the last crime film that Kubrick ever made. He had essentially conquered the genre and was ready for the next challenge, a pattern that would come to define his extraordinary career.

Copyright ©2011 James Kendrick

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