Stanley Kubrick's best and least pretentious film, largely because - unlike all his other work, with the exception of Paths of Glory - it has human beings in it. The choice of a formulaic genre, that of the Heist Gone Wrong, leaves no room for ponderous pseudo-significance and forces his creativity into the more interesting areas of character, motivation, and cinematic narrative. Sterling Hayden's personal disillusionment with the whole business of movies gives a melancholy integrity to his performance as the world-weary leader of the gang; Elisha Cook elicits true sympathy as the weakling of the mob, a decent little man who's in above his head in both love and crime. Kubrick's trademark brilliance in shot selection, montage and show-not-tell story development were never put to more entertaining use.
Review of The Killing
