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The Killing (1956)

tomatometer

100

Average Rating: 8.2/10
Critic Reviews: 5
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 0

No consensus yet.

audience

90

liked it
Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 19,238

My Rating

Movie Info

The Killing was director Stanley Kubrick's first major film effort -- though, like Kubrick's earlier films, it was economically produced with an inexpensive cast. In a variation of his Asphalt Jungle role, Sterling Hayden plays veteran criminal Johnny Clay, planning one last big heist before settling down to a respectable marriage with Fay (Colleen Gray). Teaming with several cohorts, Johnny masterminds a racetrack robbery. The basic flaw is that all the crooks involved are losers and

Unrated, 1 hr. 23 min.

Mystery & Suspense, Drama

Stanley Kubrick, Jim Thompson

Aug 15, 2001

United Artists

Cast

All Critics (33) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (34) | Rotten (1) | DVD (12)

At 27 Writer-Director Stanley Kubrick, in his third full-length picture, has shown more audacity with dialogue and camera than Hollywood has seen since the obstreperous Orson Welles went riding out of town on an exhibitors' poll.

August 3, 2011 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | Comment
TIME Magazine
Top Critic IconTop Critic

[The film] at first tends to be somewhat confusing, soon settles into a tense and suspenseful vein which carries through to an unexpected and ironic windup.

May 8, 2007 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
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Arguably Stanley Kubrick's most perfectly conceived and executed film.

May 8, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comments (2)
Chicago Reader
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An engrossing little adventure.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: New York Times | Comment
New York Times
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A brisk, satisfying film noir that features all the details of a racetrack heist gone wrong - even if the timeline is all shuffled out of order. It's thick with atmosphere and razor-sharp dialogue.

October 27, 2011 Full Review Source: Scene-Stealers.com | Comment
Scene-Stealers.com

The Criterion Collection fulfills a long rumored released with the essential Blu-ray of Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, one of the great devil's of 1950's American cinema.

August 16, 2011 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

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.

August 16, 2011 Full Review Source: Q Network Film Desk | Comment
Q Network Film Desk

A tight heist thriller from master director Stanley Kubrick.

August 15, 2011 Full Review Source: Oscar Guy | Comment
Oscar Guy

May be the greatest of American heist films because it bursts the genre to the point of existentialism.

October 19, 2010 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | Comment
eFilmCritic.com

1956 and it's already Kubrick, being Kubrick.

January 17, 2010 Full Review Source: Cinemania | Comment

Kubrick made grander and greater films, but this is among his most dramatic.

October 3, 2007 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

Even though he was just staring out, Kubrick instantly mastered the crime genre. A stunning film.

October 3, 2007 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | Comment
Empire Magazine

Stanley Kubrick's masterful manipulation of chronology brings an excruciating sense of doom to The Killing, a classical noir about a carefully threaded heist unraveled by the scheming of a fiendish femme.

May 1, 2006 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment (1)
Slant Magazine

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.

February 9, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comment

Stanley Kubrick's third film established him as a full-fledged filmmaker and a potential master.

February 4, 2006 Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | Comment
Combustible Celluloid

Kubrick's breakthrough film is one of his very best, a classic film noir that has influenced many directors (including Tarantino) in narrative structure, visual style, and tone.

June 28, 2005 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for The Killing

Johnny Clay: You'd be killing a horse - that's not first degree murder, in fact it's not murder at all, in fact I don't know what it is. "In All It's Fury and Violence"Kubrick's third feature length film, The Killing, is really what jump started his career. Before it he had made Fear and Desire, which he hated, and

January 14, 2012
blkbomb
Melvin White

Super Reviewer

Director Stanley Kubrick in his earliest days as a filmmaker, delivers an engrossing film noir tale of the "robbery gone wrong," featuring razor sharp dialogue, Kubrick's classic directing trademarks and a strong lead performance by Sterling Hayden. Most likely one of my top 25 favorite movies of all-time!

January 11, 2012
Tyler Christian

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • The Killing - Die Rechnung ging nicht auf (DE)
  • The Killing (1956) (CA)
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