Reviews of The Killing
Displaying all 2 reviews
Andhika Eka Buana
31Jan10
Once again, Kubrick proves that he is one of the best director of all-time. With this earlier work, he already show the potential about how good he would be. With a story that as tense as a modern thriller, and makes it cooler with a non-linear narrative, that springs many immination ( Tarantino’s Jackie Brown is the first that comes in mind), this is, while not Kubrick’s best feature, but it is easily the most entertaining, and fast-paced.
If there’s a little flaw, it is the very thin running time. For a man that had crafted a lot of almost 3 hours masterpiece, a 1 and 24 minutes running time is just so…tiny. I do feel he could expand the story if he would. He could pull it. But maybe (just maybe), since this is one of his earliest work, he didn’t have that enough of confidence yet…
Now again, the hardest things to do is putting my doubt to argue whether Kubrick really a human being, or a man from another planet. it’s 8 for 8 now for my Kubrick experience.
- Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
asuraf
4Jan09
Stanley Kubrick’s low budget homage to gangster films is itself often cited as the greatest American heist film of all time, thanks to a desperate lot of thieves, comprised of recognizable film noir vets, who execute a precision raid on a race track bank vault, and let it slip away through paranoia, bungling, and the inevitability that crime can’t pay in the pictures. Kubrick pushes his constantly mobile camera through cheap, expressionistic sets, using harsh light sources to create a dingy atmosphere in which the group of men (Sterling Hayden, Jay C. Flippen, Ted de Corsia, Elisha Cook Jr.) plan their heist to the second, using a studio enforced voice-over narration to guide the time-shifting narrative with ironic detachment. At 28 Kubrick was already a virtuoso at camera movement, atmosphere, and narrative manipulation, an auteur in the making, and if the film owes a debt to the likes of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, “The Asphalt Jungle”, “Rififi” and “The Naked City”, it’s only as homage; this is a film that’s too grungy, too calculated, too devastating to be a mere rip-off, it’s of its own element, and a pure cinematic adrenaline rush.
- Currently 5.0/5 Stars.