The Killers (1946)

Incredibly an exciting beginning of a movie. The murderers who kill without explanation and victim calmly awaits death. THE KILLERS is out of sync movie, which does not affect much on a very good story and a solid noir atmosphere. Flashbacks are chronologically nonlinear, are manifold, but are quite clear. Most attract attention, because the reconstruction of the victim's life. Looking at the other side, they are only an attempt to illuminate the case in which the robbed factory. The heart of the story is certainly not an insurance investigator. He is only an intermediary.The story is quite complicated and tense. Therefore, conclusions can be multiple. Why man quietly waiting for its own liquidation? For love or fraud. The victim of femme fatale or just a criminal who fell in love with the wrong woman.One of the protagonists patiently solve the mystery. He waits until all the attributes are not in his hands. Burt Lancaster as Pete Lund/Ole "Swede" Andreson is handsome and muscular actor who in all solid pace. For the first important role quite decent. Although I think it director spared some embarrassment. Several times he was close. Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins was prickly as a femme fatale. The lady who cut the flow of the story. Although I was fascinated by her beauty, I have not regretted the fate of her character at the end of the film. Edmond O'Brien as Jim Reardon is cunning, cold and relentless investigator in the style of a real detective. On one side is a bad copy of the Bogart, on the other hand the result of the popularity of such characters in film noir.The film has a slow tempo with a lot of uncertainty and tension. The sharp dialogues, gloomy atmosphere and fatalistic tone determined work on which the movie is based.

it is his film. not only the first but a film who survives to clichés and classic crime recipes for his acting. because the script use a Hemingway short story as start point for a common crime. and that is really a sin because the original gem is massacred by a story like too many others. the presence of Ava Gardner is, in same measure, one of the good points . for her art to give a special mixture of vulnerability and force to a character who seams be convict to be the same"femme fatale" of genre. short, a film full of virtues against the poor script . first - invitation to discover the short story of Hemingway. second - to admire Burt Lancaster at his first role . not the least to compare Ava Garda's performance with the others for the same type of character.

Two hit men bump off unresisting victim Ole "Swede" Anderson (Burt Lancaster, terrific in his film debut) without a hitch. Shrewd and persistent insurance investigator Jim Reardon (an excellent performance by Edmond O'Brien) decides to pursue the case and untangles a complex web of crime and trickery that leads to the lovely, yet lethal Kitty Collins (ably played to the irresistibly sultry hilt by a ravishing Ava Gardner).Director Robert Siodmark, working from a crafty and compelling script by Anthony Veiller, not only relates the gripping and intricate story at a steady pace and stages several action set pieces with breathtaking skill and precision, but also does a masterful job of crafting an extremely dark, tense, and brooding fatalistic atmosphere where almost everyone is crooked and practically nothing is initially what it seems to be. The super acting by the top-rate cast keeps this movie humming, with especially stand-out contributions from Albert Dekker as fearsome ringleader Big Jim Colfax, Sam Levene as helpful and streetwise cop Lt. Sam Lubinsky, Vince Barnett as petty thief Charleston, Virginia Christine as the sweet Lily Harmon, Jack Lambert as vicious hoodlum 'Dum-Dum' Clarke, Jeff Corey as doomed junkie Blinky Franklin, and, best of all, Charles McGraw and William Conrad as the splendidly mean and menacing killers Al and Max. Elwood Bredell's sumptuous black and white cinematography provides a beautifully moody look and boasts a few striking unbroken crane shots. The robust score by Miklos Rozsa hits the stirring spot. Highly recommended.

Often praised as quintessential film noir, "The Killers" holds up well as an absorbing, existential murder-mystery in its own right. It asks the question what value a man's life has, after that man is gone, and suggests it is well over a $2,500 life insurance claim.Ole "the Swede" Andreson (Burt Lancaster) is already lying on his back when we first meet him, waiting for the hearse. Warned he is being sought by a pair of hardened criminals, he seems barely interested. A few moments later, Lancaster's film debut comes to a sudden end, at least in real time. Flashbacks carry us the rest of the way."I don't want to know what they look like," he tells the guy with the warning. "I'm through with all that running around."The rest of the film is devoted to the investigation of insurance detective Jim Riordan (Edmond O'Brien), who learns who the Swede was mixed up with and how it sped him to his doom. Riordan discovers a green handkerchief emblazoned with harps, ("angels play 'em") and figures how the Swede was played himself by femme fatale Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner).The existential nature of the film is made clear early and often, in the Swede's acceptance of his doom, in the ink-stain-like lighting design, and in the gallows humor of the two men who fix to blast the Swede into eternity."He never had a chance to do anything to us," one of them tells a luncheonette owner. "He never even seen us.""He's only going' to see us once," the other killer says.The doomy mood is so pervasive it seems no one has a chance in this film. People face death so much its like Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," except no one has time for chess. But there's also an odd Christian message buried in the subtext. A cleaning woman stops Swede from killing himself by pleading with him so as to "sleep in consecrated ground," and later, we hear one of the culprits get told, while trying to get someone else to take the fall, "don't ask a dying man to lie his soul into hell."It's a strange movie for that, and other intriguing things as well. Based on an Ernest Hemingway short story, it quickly wanders off into its own territory by building out a story of multiple perspectives that fits together only for Riordan and the viewer's sake. I don't think "The Killers" is hard to follow at all, just a bit complicated in places where it works rather well.Riordan's actual mission is not exactly understandable. He's congratulated at film's end for having reduced the basic rate of the Atlantic Insurance Co. by one-tenth of a cent. But we care about what happens, and for that, the bringing of "The Killers" to justice feels a bit sunnier by its conclusion.There's another film version of the Hemingway short, made in 1964, which is nearly as good, albeit not as film noir but rather pulp fiction. What this version of "The Killers" has is magnificent scenics, a gripping story, and a firm command of the material by director Robert Siodmak which never lets you go from the first frame to the last.