The Killing Reviews

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

A tight heist thriller from master director Stanley Kubrick.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

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.

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

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

1956 and it's already Kubrick, being Kubrick.

Full Review | Original Score: 81/100

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

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

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

[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.

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Arguably Stanley Kubrick's most perfectly conceived and executed film.

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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.

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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.

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

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

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.

Full Review | Original Score: A

Com uma estrutura narrativa avançada para sua época, este longa é mais uma prova (desnecessária, claro) de que Kubrick sempre foi um Mestre em sua arte.

| Original Score: 5/5

Hardboiled early Kubrick.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

Strongly recommended for any film noir fan -- it's full of double-crosses and surprises, loaded with honest crooks, weak men, one wicked woman and some great two-fisted dialogue.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Among his most energetic works.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Stellar Kubrick film noir.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

A brilliant film, and one well worth seeing -- whether as an example of what Kubrick was capable of doing with limited resources, a classic film noir, or one of those many movies which Tarantino has liberally drawn from.

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