KILLERS, THE (director: Robert Siodmak; screenwriter: Anthony Veiller/short story by Ernest Hemingway/John Huston (uncredited); cinematographer: Woody Bredell; editor: Arthur Hilton; cast: Burt Lancaster (Ole "Swede" Anderson/Peter Lunn), Ava Gardner (Kitty Collins), Edmond O'Brien (Jim Riordan), Albert Dekker (Big Jim Colfax), Sam Levene (Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky), Vince Barnett (Charleston), Virginia Christine (Lilly Lubinsky), Charles McGraw (Al), William Conrad (Max), Charles D. Brown (Packy Robinson-Swede's Mgr.), Donald MacBride (Kenyon), Jack Lambert (Dum Dum), John Miljan (Jake), Phil Brown (Nick Adams); Runtime: 105; Universal; 1946)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A quintessential noir film, more entertaining and atmospheric than essential viewing, featuring a hard-boiled story, average though it may be, which goes beyond the main character getting killed in the first reel to spend the rest of the film examining why he lost interest in living anymore. All the cliché noir characters pop up here, including the femme fatale, the innocent man who is corrupted, and the calculating big boss and the cold-blooded hit men. There is also the recognizable cinematography of this genre, which is darkly shot, using shadows to frame its shots, long close-ups to show fear and to overall create a mood for what has become known in film lore as the noir world.
"The Killers" use Ernest Hemingway's short story as a starting point for its own story, as it picks up after the execution of an ex-boxer called Swede (Lancaster-in his film debut). The wonderfully engaging scene sets the stage for the dark story that unfolds, as the hit men, Al (McGraw) and Max (Conrad) drive into a small New Jersey town and enter a diner during the supper hour. They are not too subtle about what they are after, as they intimidate the diner manager, the cook, and a customer (Brown), asking about Swede (he's using an alias), even telling them that they plan to shoot him.
When, by coincidence, it turns out that the diner patron works in the same filling station as the Swede and knows the rooming house where he lives, he rushes to warn him of the danger. But Swede tells him there is nothing to do. He then asks, "Why do they want to kill you?" and Swede, while lying in bed in a darkened room replies, "I did something wrong... once." The actual killing is anti-climactic, as the killers enter his room blasting away without saying a word.
Riordan (O'Brien) is an insurance investigator who finds this routine case curious because he doesn't understand why Swede did nothing in his defense and becomes obsessed with the case, very much in the cliché of how a 1940s noir protagonist would react. And, even though his company has to pay off only a small amount on the life insurance policy, he decides to fully investigate it.
He figures out from Swede's bruised knuckles that he was an ex-fighter and finds out that he came from Philly. But first he goes to Atlantic City and meets the chambermaid Queenie in a hotel Swede stayed in. She is the sole beneficiary of the insurance, and tells Riordan she only met him once, when he stayed at the hotel and she stopped him from committing suicide, which he said was because a girl he was staying with ran out on him.
In Philly, Riordan meets with Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky (Levene) and we see through flashbacks the biography of Swede, as Sam is not only the cop who pinched him, so that Swede had to serve 3-years for a robbery, but grew up with him and was always friendly with the fighter who fought his last fight because he broke his right hand, he even married the girl (Virginia) that Swede left. After Swede quit fighting, he got involved with the wrong crowd and fell in love with the film's femme fatale, Kitty Collins (Ava), even though he knew she was the girl of a gangster called Big Jim Colfax (Dekker).
The film trails Swede's downfall and traces it to Kitty, who double-crosses him after a big-time heist Swede gets involved with, in a gang put together by Colfax. It is through Riordan's insistence to get to the bottom of the mystery, that we learn how the air went out of Swede, and why he didn't care what happened to him anymore.
For Riordan, he gets to see justice done, but the tragedy that happened to Swede is a personal matter and not society's fault -- of him foolishly putting his trust in a beautiful woman who was rotten to the core. The film is more or less a pessimistic reaction to the post-war period and of the greed and lust that blinded those who typify the kind of characters who dwell in the noir world, a place where corruption is the norm. It should also be noted that Miklos Rozsa's musical score was later used by Dragnet.
REVIEWED ON 12/6/2000 GRADE: B-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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