Synopsis
Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.
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Cast
- Sterling HaydenJohnny Clay
- Coleen GrayFay
- Vince EdwardsVal Cannon
- Jay C. FlippenMarvin Unger
- Ted de CorsiaRandy Kennan
- Marie WindsorSherry Peatty
- Elisha Cook Jr.George Peatty
- Joe SawyerMike O'Reilly
- James EdwardsTrack Parking Attendant
- Timothy CareyNikki Arcane
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Reader
Orson Welles was so taken with this film that after seeing it he declared Kubrick could do no wrong; not to be missed. - 100
Entertainment Weekly
The kind of Swiss-watch precision and attention to detail that would eventually get Kubrick labeled Hollywood's most notorious perfectionist. - 100
Austin Chronicle
As good as the story and direction are, though, the true strength of The Killing lies in the characters and characterizations. - 100
Baltimore Sun
Stanley Kubrick was always infatuated with human clockwork, both in terms of what makes each of us tick and how we choreograph our lives, deaths, and sins. The Killing, his big heist movie, suits this obsession perfectly. It is often considered, and rightly, his first masterpiece. - 100
Empire
Even though he was just staring out, Kubrick instantly mastered the crime genre. A stunning film. - 88
Slant Magazine
One of the great devils of 1950s American cinema. - 88
Chicago Tribune
Forty years later, The Killing has lost little of its punch. It's both vintage '50s noir and a stunning introduction to a killer director. [22 Jul 1998, p.L] - 80
Time Out
Characteristically Kubrick in both its mechanistic coldness and its vision of human endeavour undone by greed and deceit, this noir-ish heist movie is nevertheless far more satisfying than most of his later work, due both to a lack of bombastic pretensions and to the style fitting the subject matter.
