{"id":5411,"date":"2015-03-02T12:59:53","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T11:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=5411"},"modified":"2015-03-21T13:38:01","modified_gmt":"2015-03-21T12:38:01","slug":"the-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2015\/03\/02\/the-killing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Killing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
\n
The Killing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Blu-ray

\nRelease date:<\/B> 9 February 2015

\nDistributor:<\/B> Arrow Video

\nDirector:<\/B> Stanley Kubrick

\nWriters:<\/B> Stanley Kubrick, Jim Thompson

\nCast:<\/B> Sterling Hayden, Elisha Cook, Jr., Marie Windsor

\nUSA 1956

\n85 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In Stanley Kubrick\u2019s thrilling heist movie The Killing<\/I>, a charismatic ringleader, a brute of a man, an expert marksman, a crooked cop and three regular, ordinary guys, none of them natural criminals, are brought together for one reason: money. Fresh out of jail, Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), with the help of his cohorts, decides, rather than reform his ways, to raise the stakes. Why go to jail for $500 when you can go to jail for a million? So he muses to his devoted childhood sweetheart, Fay (Colleen Gray), who has waited patiently for his return from five years in Alcatraz. His plan: to steal the takings at a racetrack on one of the biggest days of the season, a haul that could net the men a fortune. <\/p>\n

Opening with an urgent, unsettling score, all beating drums and screaming horns, the film plunges the audience into the frantic atmosphere at the racetrack where the heist will take place, before introducing us to the ill-fated men and women caught up in the scheme. A narrator guides us through the unconventional chronology, his laconic delivery adding to the tension, as the intricacies of the plot are revealed in the lean, briskly paced film.<\/p>\n

Johnny has devised a near-flawless robbery, but with one major weakness: George (Elisha Cook, Jr.), the track\u2019s cashier, a browbeaten shell of a man who landed a gorgeous wife with never-realised promises of wealth. Emotionally manipulative, Sherry is a hard-boiled vamp, who literally flutters her false eyelashes to bend George to her will, only to sell him out for a future with her equally cynical lover. Perfectly played by Marie Windsor, Sherry is a nasty, manipulative piece of work, who can\u2019t wait to be \u2018up to her curls in cash\u2019. But any whiff of misogyny is dispelled by the strength and presence of her character; she also gets the best lines in the film, the pitch-perfect dialogue written by the pulp novelist Jim Thompson. <\/p>\n

A classic noir<\/i>, Kubrick\u2019s third feature revels in the genre\u2019s striking aesthetics, with masterful tracking shots and use of lighting. The characters, George in particular, often appear behind bars, with the shadows in some scenes cast by an iron bedstead \u2013 what should have been an object of domestic bliss now a stand-in for George\u2019s unhappy fate. The motif is repeated in a fabulously grim scene, where our characters find themselves trapped, enclosed by bars of light and dark, their fate sealed. The allegories \u2013 they are all pieces of a puzzle, pawns on a chessboard \u2013 are not always subtle, but they are evocative. <\/p>\n

Although Johnny\u2019s meticulous planning pays off, Sherry\u2019s intervention means that there is no chance of a \u2018happy\u2019 ending, only a senseless, violent outcome. The very human weaknesses of envy and ego play their part in everyone\u2019s downfall, but, Johnny, in the end, is also a victim of sheer bad luck, the unpredictable and unforeseen. As Sherry says, in the moment when her own fate has been decided for her, it\u2019s \u2018a bad joke without a punchline\u2019.<\/p>\n

Sarah Cronin<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

The Killing<\/i> is released in a double feature Blu-ray edition by Arrow Video, together with Kurbrick\u2019s second feature, Killer\u2019s Kiss<\/i> (1955).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Kubrick\u2019s classic film noir<\/i> human weakness and bad luck make the perfect heist unravel.
\nReview by Sarah Cronin<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[605,1168,80,1169,92,505,1167],"class_list":["post-5411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-check-it-out","category-dvds-and-blu-rays","tag-crime","tag-elisha-cook-jr","tag-film-noir","tag-heist","tag-jim-thompson","tag-stanley-kubrick","tag-sterling-hayden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/purUP-1ph","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4096,"url":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2014\/03\/04\/dr-strangelove\/","url_meta":{"origin":5411,"position":0},"title":"Dr Strangelove","author":"Pam Jahn","date":"March 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As part of out exploration of convoluted film titles, Barry Renshaw looks at Kubrick's classic. 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