MikePadgett.com

The Killers

— The insurance business was never so dark and forties Hollywood cinema never so deeply psychological as this.”

• Director: Robert Siodmak
• United States, 1946
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Insurance investigator Jim Reardon uncovers dark dealings when assigned to the death of Ole ‘Swede’ Andersen. Told in flashback – with more than a pinch of nihilism – from interviews with associates, acquaintances and the police, The Killers is a murky but tense affair, based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

Locked within the confines of those flashbacks, nobody’s innocent. Rather, in true noir fashion, most of the key characters are painted in shades of grey rather than black or white.

Rising stars Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster both impress here, managing to pulp the cardboard psychology of studio cinema. Lancaster does a middleweight portrayal of a boxer-turned-hood, though his Swede is by no means in the same ring as Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront. Gardner meanwhile grabs her audience by keeping her motivation a mystery, leaving viewers guessing about her innocence right to the end.