VIDEO DISCOVERY : Stanley Kubrick’s Chilling ‘Killing’
Most everyone has seen the precise, epic-like sweep of Stanley Kubrick’s direction in “Dr. Strangelove,” “2001,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Shining” and/or “Full Metal Jacket.”
As a young filmmaker in the 1950s, though, Kubrick was attuned to the gritty, low-budget film noir thriller technique epitomized in “The Killing,” recently released on video.
Similar in story and intensity to John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle,” Kubrick’s film follows a band of very serious thugs planning the biggest score of their careers--a million-dollar heist at a race track.
Led by Sterling Hayden (who also starred in “Asphalt Jungle”), the robbery seems to go as planned except for the intrusion of a small-time gangster (played by Vince Edwards), who learns of the robbery from the two-timing wife of one of the gang members.
Like so many crime films of the 1940s and ‘50s, “The Killing” has an urgent, desperate mood, intensified by no-nonsense dialogue and newsreel-like narration. This is an unrelenting 83 minutes, devoid of stylish diversions or secondary plots.
“The Killing” (1956), directed by Stanley Kubrick. 83 minutes. No rating.
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