- Film noir is often an exercise in fatalism, but I can't think of a single noir character more accepting of his impending doom than the man best known as "The Swede" (Burt Lancaster). In one of the most striking film debuts ever awarded an actor, Lancaster launches his impressive 40-year film career in Robert Siodmak's The Killers playing a man already dead on the inside, languishing on the bed of his dimly-lit apartment, stoically waiting for two creepy hitmen (William Conrad and Charles McGraw) to come kill him. A friend (Phil Brown) runs over from the local diner to warn him of what's coming, but the Swede simply responds that "there's nothing (he) can do about it" and thanks him for coming. The Swede knows he's dead, and he's far past the point of caring.
- How did the Swede end up this way? With characteristic taciturnity, he admits only that he "did something wrong once" while the rest of the film tells his story through the eyes of the people who knew him. His old pal, Police Lieutenant Lubinsky (Sam Levene), remembers the Swede as a talented boxer who broke both his hand and his career in one tragic match long ago. This turn of fortune led the Swede to some disreputable associations with a crook named "Big Jim" Colfax (Albert Dekker) and his dubious entourage of thieves (Jack Lambert and Jeff Corey). Swede's former girlfriend Lilly (Virginia Christine), now married to Lubinsky, recalls the night she realized "the boat had sailed" on their relationship once Swede laid eyes on a femme fatale named Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). An astronomically-oriented lush named Charleston (Vince Barnett) recounts how for two years he and the Swede were "never more than eight and a half feet apart." He goes on to explain, "That's how big the cell was."
- As the remarkably dedicated investigating insurance agent (Edmond O'Brien) soon discovers, the Swede's story is not a simple one. He participated in crimes, to be sure, but apparently he did it all for Kitty, whose Irish scarf kept him company in jail all those years. Doubtless the Swede was unaware that Kitty and Big Jim were partners in more than just crime. In fact, it was their final, complicated "double-cross to end all double-crosses" that led the Swede to depart for the anonymous life of a gas station attendant, but a chance encounter with Big Jim brought the past crashing back down around him. Between this film and Out of the Past, I suppose the key lesson from late 40's noir is to find a more out-of-the-way gas station before starting a new life for yourself.
- Honestly, I have trouble deciding what impresses me most about The Killers. Siodmak's direction and Elwood Bredell's stark cinematography are both stunning enough that this would be one of the quintessential films noir even without the excellent script (based on a Hemingway short story) and Lancaster's absorbing performance. Equally striking is the subtle influence this film was still wielding over fifty years after its release, the most obvious manifestations of which are Pulp Fiction's non-sequential chronology and wisecracking hitmen (I defy you not to start using the term "bright boy" after viewing this film, bright boy). Finally, there is Kitty Collins. Even by the standards of deadly females, Kitty is a particularly nasty piece of work. As her husband lays on the floor dying at the film's end, she is less interested in his fate than in inducing him to say "Kitty is innocent!" Trust me, none of the film's narrators would ever believe that.
