Unrated, 1 hr. 23 min. Directed By:
Stanley Kubrick. Release Date:
Jan 1, 1956. DVD Release
Date: Aug 15, 2001.
I’m sure if you go digging, you’ll
find the review where I talk about how much I hate heist movies. In a modern context, that’s mostly true. I liked the remake of The Italian Job to a certain extent, and the Ocean’s Eleven remake, and then I liked The Muppet Caper when I was a kid.
There might be a few others, but they weren’t memorable enough to stick
around now that I’m kind of foraging for titles. In the noir-ish, 1930s-1950s context, I find
that heist flicks’ approval ratings with me goes way through the roof. I liked The
Asphalt Jungle, but mostly because it reminded me of those Bugs Bunny
cartoons where they clearly were spoofing the genre.
I don’t know much about directors,
because they generally get filed under the heading of “celebrity” and if you
read this blog with any frequency, you know that I’m an oddity: I love movies and tend to hate the people who
are in them, with only a double handful of exceptions. Even more strange is that I
do know a thing or two about Stanley Kubrick, and this feels like a strange
film for him, although as I look at his filmography, it does appear that pretty
much anything has gone over the course of his career.
I will say that when this started,
and for about the first ten or twenty minutes, I wasn’t impressed. I found it a little difficult to follow all
the separate stories and to figure out how they were interconnected. Once the story lines converge, the movie
picks up a lot of steam and gets very enjoyable. I have a problem that a couple of the
characters have dialogue that makes them feel a bit like cartoon caricatures of
the “type” of person they were supposed to be, but by and large I really liked
this.
There are a lot of easy comparisons
to make with The Asphalt Jungle, and
since I just watched it last month as part of this project, I think the
comparisons are fair, especially since Sterling Hayden, the lead in both films,
plays a very, very similar role. I do
think that The Killing feels like a
more genuine portrayal of criminals and their associates, but then, that’s
probably because I can’t accept that there may once have been people who did
that “you dirty rat, see. You dirty rat”
stuff. It’s too hokey, and The Killing has a lot less of it.
