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The Killing

A review by Mike Shea   Movie Rating: ( * * * * · )    DVD Rating: ( * · · · · )

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The Killing is one of Stanly Kubricks earlier films, but is one that really shows off his creative ability more than the Hollywood shlocky films of Killers Kiss and Spartacus. Here is a film that is really different, but to us nowadays we have seen films like it including Jackie Brown and Reservoir Dogs, two popular Terantino flicks. The Killing is a movie about a heist. There are multiple pieces that put together this heist and rather than show it by time, it shows it by scene. What you get are pieces of a large puzzle that finally come together in one moment. After that moment the story is rather linear and finally ends up with a pretty weak climax. The characters and actors that played them are very well done and very individual, you find yourself liking many of them with very little information about them. The DVD was really just a dump of a tape. The picture was in 1.33 to 1 which was the standard for the time. I watched it matted at 1.78 to 1 and found it quite good. The sound is mono and there are no extras. Overall a revolutionary movie for its time and if you can forget the fact that there are many movies today that follow the same format.