A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The Fact that this was Shot as a TV-Movie actually Adds to the Surreal Appeal. Real-Life Colors are Pumped, Enriched, Enhanced, and the Contrasted Brightness is Amped. It's a "Hot" Medium after all, and Film is "Cool".So when Viewing Director Don Siegel's Movie, in Theatres (after completion deemed too violent for living rooms) You were in a State of Two Separations and it Appears as if some kind of Alchemy is at work.It was Noticed by Future Filmmakers and its Influence has been Substantial. Lee Marvin would make "Point Blank" (1967) for John Boorman. Tarantino and Scorsese have also made Homages. John Cassavetes made it for the Money, and Ronald Reagan made it for a Friend. Angie Dickinson was just getting Started and Recognized the Glamour Gig, and being Slapped, Punched, and Dangled from a Window would not go Unnoticed. Clu Gulager also was aware of the Powerful, Steeley, Health-Nut and totally Nuts Newness of His Character and Nailed it.This is one of the First Neo-Noirs. It is right there at that Turning Point Downfall of the Hays Code, coinciding with the End of Camelot. 1964 is When Culturally, everything started to Change and this Movie has that Feel. It is an Amalgamation of the Old and the New and Helped Usher in the Movie's Blood Dripping Violence of the Decade where Life was Imitating Art on the Streets of America and Vice Versa.

What I'd suggest if it's possible, is to watch the 1946 Robert Siodmak directed version of "The Killers" and this one back to back. Both are offered in a Criterion Collection DVD package that's a treat for film noir fans. Personally, I lean toward the earlier version myself, it's darker and the tale is more complex in the telling, utilizing a total of eleven flashback sequences. The later film uses only three, with emphasis on the main character shifting from an insurance investigator in the former, to one of the titled killers in the remake.Probably as a reflection of inflation adjusted times, the robbery at the heart of this story approaches a cool million bucks, at least four times greater than in the original picture. It's all eventually recovered at the finale with the gunning down of the principals, leaving the viewer with less of an ambiguous ending when considering Ava Gardner's feverish rant in the Siodmak version when she tried to get her dying benefactor Colfax to clear her name. Watching Ronald Reagan get shot by Lee Marvin's Charlie was just a bit too reminiscent of life imitating art considering the assassination attempt on the President's life two decades later. Sometimes all you can do is wonder.Speaking of Marvin, along with his partner Clu Gulager, this pair has to be some of the most ruthless assassins ever put on screen. In living color you get to see the bright red results of their handiwork and it's not pretty. On the other hand, filming in color tends to diminish the picture's noir appeal and move it more into action/thriller territory. Likewise, Angie Dickinson's appeal as the femme fatale loses some of it's luster here when she's revealed as Jack Browning's (Reagan) gold digging girlfriend. You just can't do away with the dark, confining sets and come up with the same ambiance.You know, I noticed something I thought was kind of cool here. In the 1946 original film, insurance investigator Reardon tracks down a former cell mate of the John Cassavetes character portrayed by Burt Lancaster. Lancaster's "Swede' took the blame for Ava Gardner's theft of a piece of jewelry. His prison cell-mate Charleston, who opted out of the mail truck heist for the quarter million payroll robbery, was portrayed by character actor Vince Barnett. Whether it was intended or not, there's an inadvertent tribute to him seen on a building marquee when the camera pans a scene of the city in this picture. Reading from top to bottom of the marquee, it spells out the name 'Barnett's'.

The nasty meet the unlucky, and everyone comes out a loser except the viewer in this, a nifty, hard-boiled pulp mystery directed by Don Siegel with nerves of steel and a heart of lead.We open on a home for the blind where two men (Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager) stride in. Despite the dark Ray-Bans they sport we know they are not residents as they coldly harass a frightened receptionist and make a beeline to a classroom where sighted teacher Johnny North (John Cassavetes) gives motor instructions. North is soon a corpse and the killers $25,000 richer, but Charlie, the older killer, is left wondering why the guy didn't put up more of a struggle."I gotta find out what makes a man decide not to run," he tells Lee, his young partner (played by Gulager, which is confusing, since Lee is also the name of the actor playing Charlie.) "Why all of a sudden he'd rather die."Lee just wants the million dollars that Johnny supposedly made off with but didn't have. But for Charlie, those last moments of Johnny North make him want to know more. This gives "The Killers" an existential frisson not far removed from its source material, an Ernest Hemingway short story, though the plot veers from that, more widely than a 1946 film of the same name which used the same story.Both films are great in different ways. This one plays very well in its own particular space, set in the present-day early 1960s with a kind of "Rat Pack" vibe accentuated by the cool threads, the jazzy score by a young John Williams, and the sleek presence of Angie Dickinson as one killer femme fatale. You even have Norman Fell, who was in the real Rat Pack's "Ocean Eleven," playing a bad guy.The chief bad guy is played by Ronald Reagan in his last film role. Reagan seems to know the kind of film he was in, a twisted dark comedy using his straight-backed image as one of its many jokes. Reagan gives as good as he gets, slapping Dickinson in one memorable scene. It's not just that he hits her, but the way he hits her, casually and with almost a smile on his face. The only Reagan performance that rivals this one for ruthlessness is the one Phil Hartman gave in that famous "Saturday Night Live" sketch after Iran-Contra broke. If you still haven't recovered from that pasting Walter Mondale got in 1984, you may want to see this film.Reagan's good, but Marvin and Gulager are better, trading Tarantino banter like when Gulager's Lee teases Charlie about his drinking and not eating enough proteins. They are so brilliantly bad you mind when the film leaves them for extended periods to deliver one of its three extended flashback sequences, when we learn how Johnny was led astray.I think the most interesting thing "The Killers" does is present Dickinson's Sheila Farr character in three different ways, depending on the subjective view of the teller. This might seem a flaw, except in one of the extras of the Criterion DVD Siegel suggested this was a deliberate strategy. In all three she's a user, but with varying amounts of heart and cunning. It leaves us a bit unprepared for the truth, which seems to take even Charlie for a loss. Not that he's pausing to make sense of it. "I'm sorry, lady, but I don't have the time," winds up being the first thing he says, and pretty much the last.Does the plot Johnny gets involved in make sense, the way it is planned or the way it goes down? I don't think so. I'm not wild about Cassevettes' quirky performance, while cheap sets (a blue cyclotron substitutes for a racetrack background in one sequence) betray the cheap production values of this, what would have been the first TV movie ever except for the fact it wound up being too violent for Madison Avenue. No dog-food commercials for this sucker!Yet even its time-anchored defects give "The Killers" a kind of momentous grandeur, like the garish color scheme in tune with Zapruder's famous movie from the same period. The clipped quality of the dialogue (by future "Star Trek" scribe Gene L. Coon) has a kind of majesty worthy of Hemingway."You're a winner, and I don't like losers," Sheila tells Johnny. "Little men who cry a lot.""The Killers" may not be a classic, but it's still a winner worth your while.

The Killers is directed by Don Siegel and adapted to screenplay by Gene L. Coon from the short story written by Ernest Hemmingway. It stars Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Clu Gulager, John Cassavetes, Ronald Reagan and Claude Akins. Music is by John Williams and cinematography by Richard L. Rawlings.Hit men Charlie (Marvin) and Lee (Gulager) enter a school for the blind and gun down motor mechanic teacher Johnny North (Cassavetes). He doesn't resist. Why? This question bothers Charlie and he sets about finding out...It's difficult when reading the name The Killers to not think of the 1946 film made by Robert Siodmak, a film that is revered as one of the quintessential movies of film noir. But Don Siegel's film, a re-jigging of the plot, is well worthy of consideration as quintessential neo-noir.Originally slated to be the first made for TV movie as part of a new era for movies on television, the film was pulled by NBC for being too violent. With the film also featuring a murder by sniper scene, the recent assassination of John F. Kennedy by sniper ensured The Killers was temporarily on unsafe ground. With Ronald Reagan making his last appearance on film before moving into politics, unusually playing a villain no less, the 64 version of The Killers has a bit of history.It's a film about double-crossing, murder and fateful yearnings, featuring amoral characters in a wonderfully constructed story that is told in flashbacks! Photographed in bright, almost garish, colours, it's very much the polar opposite to Siodmak's version, well visually at least, but it is very effective and striking, almost enhancing the lurid nature of Coon's screenplay. It's an aggressive film where the violence packs a punch, and the ending has a considerable black heart.The cast are mostly effective. Marvin and Gulager's hit-man pairing are deliberately off kilter in terms of personality, and it's these two that propel the movie forward (well backwards really). Cassavetes makes interesting work as live wire dupe Johnny, Akins does good as a pal watching on helplessly as Johnny loses his life footings and Dickinson sizzles as she fatalises the femme. Weak link is Reagan, who looks ill at ease playing a tough villain type. It's no surprise to learn later on down the line that he wasn't very fond of the role.Good quality neo-noir crafted by a man who knew how to do the real deal back in the day. 7.5/10