Customer Reviews

The Killers (1964) [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Deemed too violent for television and released to theaters, this is a surprisingly good reworking of the Ernest Hemingway short story. Guided by Don Siegel's expert direction, "The Killers" (1964) takes fatalistic noir to its logical end. Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes and Clu Gulager deliver memorable portrayals, but the big surprise remains Ronald Reagan as a brutal crime boss who slaps around Angie Dickinson. Oddly enough, it was the future president's final acting gig and his only villainous role. Marvin's closing line is priceless.

Ronald Reagan's last movie is a forgotten classic. Reagan is pitted against bad - guy hit man Lee Marvin in a classic caper movie. Angie Dickenson smolders up the screen in this 60's adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway story. John Cassavetes character as a washed up race car driver provides the irony when he gets mixed up with Reagan's armored car heist scheme. Clu Gallagher and Claude Akins support in Dirty Harry Director's Don Siegel's best, but underappreciated, effort.

From the start to the end you can't get Lee in a better movie that was made for him. It's a must see for movie buffs.

Saw this movie when stationed in England (1964), Never could have imagined at that time the,T.V., commercial Borax/GE promoter would become Governor of my birth state or President of the USA. I was impressed in 1964 as well as now as to how uncomfortable a part of acting this project was for him. Ronald Reagan, Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson and John Cassavetes, acting the old school way, a must have for collectors.

"point blank", "prime cut" and "the killers". all trim, tough lee marvin roles. marvin and gulager are excellent as partners. with one of the best ending lines ever!!

I was an child with insomnia when I first caught this movie on Channel 56 late at night, and was horrified to see my president shoot the man I wanted to be with this gorgeous sleepy-eyed girl. Recently, again, I wanted to see this movie in order to watch Ronald Reagan be a villain and was especially satisfied because this was late in his acting career and so he looked much like he looked by the time he became president, and so it's interesting to hear him say stuff like "I believe in Larceny, but I don't condone murder." He's a stiff criminal, a bitter misogynist, orders cronies to do most of his dirty work-- not much different from his political career. Furthermore, Angie Dickinson is absoloutely gorgeous! Plus Lee Marvin's great, and the film is interesting, shot with some neat angles which add to the "weirdness" of it. I recommend the movie fully, but it has almost nothing to do with the Hemingway short story that it is supposedly based upon.

Existentialism at it's zenith, this film defines the term "Noir". Even Reagan pulls his weight in this one, but you'll have to find out for yourselves. I would like to say more about this brilliant piece of film - making but,"I'm sorry, I just don't have the time"

As I have mentioned before at the start of other reviews in this crime noir genre I am an aficionado, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh ya, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. I mentioned in a review of the 1946 version of the film under review, The Killers, starring Burt Lancaster (as the smitten fall guy) and Ava Gardner (as the femme fatale, what else) that for plot line, and plot interest, femme fatale interest and sheer duplicity that film was in the former category. This techno-color version pales (no pun intended) by comparison although in spots the twists in the plot line here are interesting.

Neither screen adaptation owes much, except the opening passages, to Ernest Hemingway's short story of the same name. The beauty of the shortness of the Heminway story is that it left plenty of room for other possibilities to expand on his plot line. But in the end the central question of all three vehicles is the question- why did two professional killers, serious, badass killers want to kill the seemingly harmless fall guy (here, Johnny North, always a Johnny somewhere in these noir things, played by a young John Cassavetes)?. And why didn't they run when they had the chance. But come on now, wake up, you know as well as I do that it's about a dame, a frill, a frail, a women, and not just any woman, but a high roller femme fatale. In this case that frill I is Sheila Farr (here played by Angie Dickerson who whatever her charms for a 1960s audience pales, again no pun intended, to the earlier version's Kitty Collins played by sultry, yes sultry, Ava Gardner, as a colleen).

As I have noted recently in a review of the 1945 crime noir, Fallen Angel, femme fatales come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions. But high or low all want some dough, and a man who has it or knows how to get it. This is no modernist, post-1970s concept but hard 1940s realities extended into the early 1960s. And duplicity is just one of the "feminine wiles" that will help get the dough. Now thoroughly modern Sheila, like Kitty is not all that choosy about the dough's source, any mug will do, but she has some kind of sixth sense that it is not Johnny, at least not in the long haul and that notion will drive the action for a bit.

And if you think about it, of course Sheila is going with the smart guy, the guy with things really figured out (Jack, played here by a demure Ronald Reagan wearing a smashing greased down pompadour hair-do and looking very non-presidential). And old chump Johnny is nothing but a busted-up old palooka of a race car driving (Swede was a prize fighter) past his prime and looking for some easy money. No, no way Kitty is going to wind up with him in that shoddy rooming house out in the sticks hustling for short dough on the jalopy circuit , waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Let's run through the plot a little and it will start to make more sense. You already know that other shoe dropped for Johnny. And why he just waited for the fates to rush in on him. What you didn't know is that to get some easy dough for another run at Sheila's come hither affections he, Johnny North, is involved along with Sheila's current paramour, Jack, and a couple of other midnight grifters in a major hold-up of a old-timey rural U.S. Mail truck (go big, or don't go at all, right) The heist goes off like clockwork. Where it gets dicey is pay-off time. Just like with the earlier version's Kitty and Big Jim Sheila and Jack are dealing the others out, and dealing them out big time. And they get away with it for a while until the guys who did the "hit" on Johnny (played by Lee Marvin and Clu Glanger) get all balled up trying to figure out why Johnny just cast his fate to the wind start to figure things out.

And they lead, or are led, naturally to figure out the big double-cross. But double-crossing people, even simple midnight grifters, is not good criminal practice and so all hell breaks loose. Watch this film. And take the same advise I gave in the 1946 review stay away from dark-haired Irish beauties AND also tall, leggy, brunettes with no heart, especially if you are just an average Joe. Okay.

Note: This is not the first Hemingway writing, or an idea for a writing, that has appeared in film totally different from the original idea. More famous, and rightly so is his sea tale, To Have Or Have Not, that William Faulkner wrote the screenplay for and that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall turned into a steamy (1940s steamy, okay) black and white film classic.

Ronald Reagan was a superb actor, better than his Hollywood reputation, and he's about the only redeeming feature of this cheapie TV knockoff of the classic 1946 Burt Lancaster film. The violence is ugly and unsettling, even for today, which forced Universal to release it theatrically. This movie contains some of the worst, most non-convincing rear projection in cinematic history. What's more, every scene is horribly overlit, especially outdoor scenes, giving the whole movie a weird sort of unreality, the actors glowing like wax dummies under too many klieg lights. The bad lighting is especially striking when stock footage of car racing is interspersed with cheesy studio shots. Except for Reagan and Lee Marvin, the lead acting is pretty bad, expecially the love interest between John Cassavetes and Angie Dickinson, who gives a totally wooden performance, as stiff as her hairspray. The killers are Marvin and co-star Clu Gulager, whose hammy, ridiculous performance makes you think he belongs in a Munsters episode. Things pick up in the middle of the movie when the actual heist takes place and Reagan gets more screen time. Reagan looks mean and menacing in this picture, totally convincing, like he's ready to chew up Commies and hippies. The ending is absolutely ridiculous; your jaw will hit the ground. Director Don Siegel would go on to better things, of course, including the first Dirty Harry picture. Only as a curio of our great President's swan song does this dust collector belong on your shelf.