The Killing

A masked man in a suit and fedora holds a gun inside a stark black-and-white interior. Containers and equipment sit on a counter beside him.

Stanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest, twistiest noirs. Career criminal Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.

Written by pulp novelist Jim Thompson and featuring suspenseful tracking shots and a phenomenal cast, including Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Timothy Carey, Elisha Cook Jr., and Marie Windsor, The Killing is Kubrick at his finest: a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut—that also reportedly provided key inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's debut feature Reservoir Dogs (1992).

Part of our "Noirvember" series. Courtesy: MGM/Swank Motion Pictures

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