This movie is from the period when film-noir was at its very best. It's a movie with all of the right ingredients, that above all got made very well.
Foremost thing that makes this movie a great watch it its story. It got based on an Ernest Hemingway story and it features plenty of great moments and mystery in it. The way the story is being told through flashback techniques works out quite well for the movie and its story and is one of the reasons why the movie works out so well and also original enough within the genre itself.
A complaint about the movie would be that it starts to drag a bit after a while. Toward the end it gets a bit harder to keep your full interest but luckily the movie still ends well and not on a downer.
One of the things that is also always important for a good film-noir is its overall look and feeling to it. Luckilly "The Killers" have nothing to complain about that. It has some great cinematography. It provides the movie with the right kind of mysterious and tense atmosphere.
It's also a movie with a rather good cast, that consist out of actors that you would perhaps not immediately expect to see in a film-noir. It was actually the first time Burt Lancaster appeared in a film-noir and just movie in general but he immediately starts off by playing the lead in it. He simply did a great job, though I suspect he had studied some of his colleagues thoroughly before playing his role. He has a sort of Bogart touch and look over him in this movie.
All in all it's a really solid film-noir that is truly recommendable.
8/10
Watch trailer
No comments: