Midweek Mention... The Killing

The Killing

Reegs: can't remember what happened with it though.

Sidey: She went full Vader. Yeah.

Reegs: Well, yeah. She gets That is how it finishes, literally, isn't it? With her putting the mask

Sidey: Fade to black.

Reegs: Oh, you're on the old vino tonight.

Sidey: Yeah, I was going to drive and then it stopped raining and I thought, fuck it. Cyclage,

Reegs: cyclage. But look, it's hammering it down again now.

Reegs: I wonder how Pete's getting on.

Sidey: easy bit now, isn't

Reegs: Well, I think it's the hardest bit, isn't it? Getting down. Mm

Sidey: they look like they had some sort of crisscross slash mc hammer trousers

Reegs: there. Yeah, they're

Sidey: especially had super baggy.

Reegs: Quite

Dan: baggy,

Reegs: I think

they're

Sidey: insulated and stuff.

not

Dan: only that,

there's,

Reegs: they've got a pair underneath. They'll have long johns and shit underneath.

They'll

Sidey: you

Dan: have to They're,

Reegs: cars.

Sidey: You're gonna need to get your microphone ready as well.

As is tradition, Dan, we start off with our mid weeker. Yeah. And we're going back to 1956.

Dan: Back in the 50s

Sidey: Dan's old joke here. For Stanley Kubrick debut?

Reegs: this was his third film.

Sidey: Which was his debut? Spartacus? No,

Reegs: I really wish I had it on

here,

Sidey: it. Anyway, this is The Killing. Yeah. A crime caper.

Yeah.

Dan: A heist

movie.

Sidey: indeed in extreme detail.

Dan: Yeah, it's it's got a whiff of Rafifi, that French film that I really like and just through the realism of the plan of the heist job and everything.

It is Kubrick. He was I think directed and did the screen play for it as well. There's obviously other people involved as well. It wasn't just Kubrick on his own. He had cameramen and all sorts, so there's a whole host of people that were involved there. There's some nice shenanigans going on there,

Sidey: It might not. Stanley might not be

Dan: we'll just work that in.

Sidey: that. I tried to

Dan: It might not. Stanley might not have been pleased with that

Cris: I tried to be as silent as I could, I

Dan: well, you know, we'll get it right. Listeners, don't worry,

we'll

Cris: any, any listeners that have been upset with that. It was just my brain trying to

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: thinking

Sidey: And this movie, it starts off at the racetrack, doesn't it?

Dan: Yeah, well it opens up with the horses no, coming out the, the tunnel, and they're heading towards, and there's a big wide shot of the back of the car.

Bands down the grandstand and it looks down onto the track and all the horses are going around and we hear that, you know that they're

Sidey: up there.

They load the horses into the stalls, and the camera is just to the side showing them. And I thought, this is a really um, kind of Kubrick y shot. It was all wonky and quite fluid and all over the place. And I was, know. We'll get into it in

Dan: yeah, well, it's it is that it starts off in the race. And throughout this film, it will cut and it will go back into the past. What's already happened

Sidey: It's non linear.

Dan: it's nonlinear. Thank you.

Sidey: A

guy's had a bet on this race and he's bet on every horse. That's right, isn't it?

Reegs: Yeah. We're informed that by a narrator who is sort of giving us the details. You know, it's, it's Wednesday at 4:00 PM

Yeah. Almost. Yeah. That kind of narration and it's really not clear for a long time how all of the stories are connected.

You see people going about the, what it reminded me of most was something like Memento.

It's like the way that you have to piece it together afterwards, how the characters relate to each other and know each other and

Dan: So effectively the start of the film is almost the end as well because that is part of,

Reegs: Well, it's really,

Dan: a long way into the middle.

Reegs: it's a complicated sort of assembling the team type montage that will come back to because what is, and it's impossible for us to talk about it in the order that it is in the film because it will just be really, really difficult.

So.

We're just sort of jumping backwards and forwards between different characters who are being set up for executing their part in a heist. That part, that's made real clear very early on, and it's being orchestrated by Johnny Clay,

Sidey: Oh Johnny!

Reegs: an ex con. He's been in prison for five years. Is that right?

Dan: yeah, he's just about got out. And if there's one thing he's learned then it's don't take little amounts

Sidey: He says, you might, you know, you're going to get sent down for a 10 heist. You might as well get sent down for a million.

Dan: They'll send you down just the same it doesn't make a difference so that's one thing he's learned in the five years away but otherwise he's he's a pretty big unit.

Sidey: but it's we don't meet him in straight away because the the first guy is the guy who's had all the bets and the horse that wins, he takes his betting ticket stub to the cashier. He's written. That's right. He's written where the meat is gonna go down here.

I think he also shows that to

Reegs: the bartender.

Sidey: And so you're getting to learn that there's

Reegs: It's you get The camera

just tells you which people you're supposed to be interested in and which stories you're supposed to follow. We then go off for we follow a, a crooked cop who owes some money to a loan shark who is actually one of the most forgiving loan sharks I've ever seen.

You need another couple of a week?

Cris: yeah. I was like, oh, yeah,

Sidey: Because don't worry, I'll, you know, I'll make sure you get your money. He's like, thanks. Thank you for saying that and he he sort

Cris: I couldn't afford

Sidey: It's the most passive aggressive threat. Yeah, you know, the underlying thing is yeah, you will but also he's not like super threatening about

Dan: he's very matter of fact, like, Oh, it's just as well you do, cause I'll fucking murder and torture you terribly if you don't.

Cris: interest though.

Reegs: So we get this like depiction of all these kind of fairly ordinary people with some ordinary problems.

We meet George, whose wife kind of clearly hates him. She's like, really?

Cris: She's a bitch.

Reegs: Yeah. , she, there's

Cris: other

Dan: Well, well, George works at the track. He's behind the desk. He's one of the cashiers and His wife is clearly he's punching way above his weight

She's lovely.

She's beautiful and she's giving him shit for

Reegs: She's

Dan: making the money

Reegs: She humiliates him.

You know,

she's like really horrible to him. And it's pretty clear that she's also seeing someone else as well. Who turns out to

Dan: Just so many parallels for all of us, it was it was tough to take at this point, but we blasted on.

Reegs: so you get like, so you get, you get Kubrick like showing you all these people. They're normal.

going about their normal lives, but seeing how they're built into Johnny's plan. And even the rates into this, he says, none of these men are criminals. They've all got jobs. They're all seemingly normal, but they've got problems and they've all got a little larceny in them. And that's how he sets it all up.

So

Sidey: We're introduced to almost everyone and then we go to the meet. They're all in this place. They're having a get together and everyone's got a very defined role in the heist but there's two others that then and Johnny's kind of puts this on the group without they're okay and says no we've got these other two guys don't worry they they they're gonna and they're like well you know probably should have cleared this with everyone rather than just you know doing a fake on play.

And there's a little bit of, you know, and he's clearly the ringleader, the orchestrator of the whole

Cris: the whole thing. They do their separate jobs. You do? We do our separate jobs and everybody gets that and they're gonna be the only people that get paid beforehand for specific jobs to do.

One of them needs to shoot a horse,

Sidey: it's,

better if people don't meet, right? Yes. You can't connect the dots. The less you

Yeah.

Cris: and the other one needs to start a fight.

Reegs: you say that but there is a problem because he does bring them all together to meet right because all of them come to Johnny's apartment, I think and george's wife follows him There so she overhears about the the

Sidey: money.

Reegs: Well,

you hear a slap off screen.

Don't you?

Sidey: don't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: yeah, yeah. So yeah, they hire this gunman for hire and also this ex con Russian chess playing wrestler.

Sidey: Real hairy back problem.

Reegs: yeah, that he goes to meet and has a conversation with him and they, he tells him like, you know, I'm going to pay you. I think it's five grand, two and a half grand for.

Dan: Starting a fight.

Reegs: Starting a fight, and two and a half grand for not asking any questions about what it's about

Dan: And yeah, he wants somebody who knows

he's you know, he said, you could pay anybody to do this, Johnny, you know, he's,

Sidey: But this guy, the fight. Yeah. He's going to go inside for this fight.

Dan: he's going inside.

Sidey: picking up policemen over his head and fucking pole driving them into the floor.

Yeah, yeah. It's not the kind of, it's not just a little skirmish.

Dan: the he's taking a whole battalion with him to the point where they need to call out the police that protecting the, the money. Room and Johnny knows this of course he knows that you know They're gonna have to pull these guys out and when they do he slips in the door puts on his mask

Sidey: That's

right.

Reegs: flowers, and Mike, the one whose wife is sick, he nearly fucks the whole operation because the guy's like, oh, just put your flowers in some water, and he's like, no! Like, just leave it alone. Even

Dan: that when George, who's in the locker room with him at the time and walks past, he can hear the clunk of the flowers drop into the into the locker, which is clearly then, But he's in on it as well. So, but they don't know this

Reegs: this. And none of this is done in, cause we're talking about now the heist in chronological order, but it's not done in chronological order at all.

Dan: it's not linear.

Reegs: it is

Sidey: Yeah, so johnny is able to he gets the gun. He puts a clown mask on he's got a Like an over shirt on in a disguise and he goes into the cashier's room and This guy made me laugh. So there's four people in the room and he says he's got this enormous Duffel bag thing. He's like fill that full of the cash and this guy's just spilling money all over the fucking place I'm like be fucking careful with that.

Were you but it's enormous I mean, I think we're talking about

Reegs: 000, 000 in

Sidey: dollars in there Which he then sort of makes them go into the change room, lock the door, the bag goes out of the window, and he's able to just walk out taking off his shirt and his different civvies.

Reegs: Well, he's allowed to walk out the bag is picked up by the policeman who has

also turned down a report from somebody's come in saying, Oh, there's been a murder.

And he's like, no, no, I'm

Dan: well, he's left his post, isn't he? He's reported in that the lines were a bit dodgy. Just as he was leaving, someone was going, Oh, thank God you're here. They're going to kill each other. And he's just

Sidey: the plan has been to shoot. horse or the jockey, I don't think it matters which,

Dan: The horse.

Sidey: and he shoots the horse this hired gun and as he's trying to escape, I mean he gets nowhere, he just backs the car up and the police or security find him.

Reegs: It's an, it's an interesting little interaction, this guy, because he uses a derogatory racist term

Sidey: It shot me when he said

Reegs: yeah, it shocked me as well to get rid of the guard. He's, first of all, he's got to where he shouldn't be because he's bribed him with a little bit of money and they've established that he's cool and he's actually treated him with a little bit of respect.

So the, the guards now got really friendly. Are you having a nice day? I'll bring you this horseshoe for luck. Then he has to, he says this racial. thing to get rid of him and that is ultimately what fucks him as he tries to leave afterwards because he goes over the horseshoe that the guard tried to give him and it punctures his tire and is then shot by the

Dan: Who did that guy remind you of?

The the shooter

Reegs: I don't know. It's a very exaggerated, like Italian American,

Dan: reminded me a little john You Torito, you know, plays Jesus in

Reegs: yeah, there is a bit of that.

Dan: It was, I thought it was almost like some relation to be honest.

Sidey: the first kind of chink in the plan

Yeah,

Reegs: but it's his act of shooting the horse that allowed it in the confusion when it's reported back at the race that over the Tannoys that it was actually, the horse was shot. There's like a mass panic and that's how Johnny escapes in

Dan: That's right. The horse was shot. But also it calls in to distribute the whole result of that race and everything and people are thinking, oh, well, you know, if they bet on that, then they ain't going to make any money. They're not going to, of course that wasn't their plan.

Their plan was to hit the, the motherlode where all the bets were coming in. And that money is now in the back of,

Sidey: well, it goes back to the motel, doesn't it?

Dan: goes back to the motel. Johnny picks it up. He buys a suitcase

Reegs: We don't actually see it at this point. Yeah, because everybody, the plan is for everybody to go back to Johnny's apartment. And And they're starting

Sidey: they're starting to get a little bit nervous because Johnny is always in time and the narration is very clear about timings and everyone knows exactly how long it takes to get somewhere. But Johnny is late for the rendezvous and and the

Cris: Fifteen minutes late.

Sidey: older fella. It's getting very nervous

Cris: George,

Sidey: George. George is getting like, oh, you know, he he's a bit like old Gil in the Simpsons. He's

Reegs: He reminded me, no, he's got I'll tell you who he reminded me of. He's got that real hangdog, henpecked, it's like William H. Macy.

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. He does. Yeah. Yeah. So he fears the worst. He thinks Johnny probably done a runner with the cash and they're all gonna be left stranded but that is not what happens.

Reegs: Val, who was Sherry, who was George's wife's sort of bit on the side. He was also a mobster. And he turns up at the apartment demanding to know where the money is. And then where's George? The jerk. And George comes out firing with

Sidey: It's really quick. It happens really quick, doesn't

Dan: can take it no more, can he?

George has just snapped. He's grabbed a gun and started getting some heat in those shoes.

Sidey: me get a pretty cool POV shot actually of George and he's looking around the apartment but stumbling so he can tell he's and everyone is dead.

Yeah. Everyone's just in the crossfire just been killed. And as that's happening, Johnny has pulled up outside the apartment and George comes out and sort of slumps over his bonnet, but he's so

Dan: fucked

he doesn't

Sidey: disoriented. He doesn't realize Johnny, he stumbles across the road into his own vehicle and gets out of there.

Cris: While we also get told the story of why

Sidey: late, Johnny's late. Just traffic

Cris: no, because there was the stampede at the racecourse, so it made him 15

Sidey: they hadn't factored that commotion into it.

Reegs: George goes home to kill

Sidey: there's also a police car comes around, so. Johnny legs it and the voiceover tells us that they'd agreed That if anything like that was to happen that they would

Dan: put to

Sidey: would all just be put to one side

Cris: it's being compromised,

Sidey: Until it blows over and then it

Dan: if it's been compromised, keep hold of the money, we'll sort it out

Sidey: the

Reegs: So the story is going to wrap up. In terms of plot really quickly, but he stretches this bit out at the end here. So first George goes off and kills Sherry before he dies.

They die together basically. And then Johnny and Faye, his fiance head to the airport with the money. And he wants to, well, check his luggage in, but,

Sidey: this is where the suit, this is where he's put it, he's changed it from the duffle bag into the suitcase

Reegs: from the motor.

Cris: and even then, it's funny how he drops, no, but it's not, it's funny how he drops He, instead of just putting it nicely and whatever, all that money, he just empties it in a field,

Reegs: Yeah, yeah.

Cris: And half of the money is in the field, he doesn't even make an effort to

Reegs: Well, they're panicking

Sidey: his panic stations. Yeah

Reegs: panic, and he bundles all, as much as he can

Dan: can. The keys don't work on the suitcase, which is going to bite him in the arse in a little while. But it's it's a rush to get there.

Out because the net is closing. There's, there's cops and FBI around the, the airport.

Reegs: You've got a massive suitcase full of cash you've got to get away.

Dan: of size of like a couch

Sidey: He must be

flying EasyJet because they are being wankers about the size of his

Dan: are, but

Cris: I have to say, this is in the 50s and they would still not allow him in the 50s to

Dan: have a bag that

big.

Reegs: understand is, I'm pretty sure she says to him, you've already checked two bags in and

Sidey: Yeah, when did you do that?

Reegs: With, why just uncheck, like, check anyway, they forced him to check. Can I

have

Dan: just to tape that bag around. Just, just, can I have a bit of tape? Just a bit of scotch

Sidey: I was waiting for them to say, why, why, what's in here?

Cause they don't, they, they let the thing go on for ages. And he says, unless you're worried about the contents, do you want to tell us

Dan: to tell us what's in

Cris: we can

Sidey: he's like, Oh no, that'd be the first question. He's being really particular about

Reegs: it's 1950s in it's different world So anyway, he is forced to check this bag through which doesn't want to do and you get we've seen dropped interspersed throughout this a hoity toity woman and her fucking annoying poodle Chihuahua

Sidey: is a little bit I

Reegs: but no, I absolutely love this because at the end of this is he's watching his bag getting taken out on the luggage thing.

The dog escapes and the luggage driver on one of those little electric cart things has to swerve to avoid the dog and the suitcase falls off and opens and two million dollars just like. Falls out into the wind across the, the tarmac and his face is just a picture Johnny's and he just turns straight away knows the jig is

Sidey: quite a long time but we watch it blowing

Reegs: We watch it

Sidey: really good and yeah. Right. His face is like, oh, that's suboptimal.

Reegs: Turns to leave and we've seen these two old guys sort of by the door and Faye, I think it's Faye, tries to get him. She says, So

out. of here. Let's get out. this way. And he says, one

Dan: kind of goes by them and by the time the second taxi Has has come around the cops have turned on to him. They're pointing at him. They're walking through the glass and

She's up

Reegs: though he can go

Dan: and he

just turns around and he's He is at the end of his motherfucking tether.

His gigs all up, his escape plan's gone, the money's gone. And John, Johnny's pretty fucking angry. He ain't going back to prison is the feeling you get. And it just

Sidey: cuts Well, it's an ambiguous

Reegs: cuts there. Or what's

Dan: Or what's the difference going to shoot them and and go down in a, in a

ended,

Sidey: I thought it was a really ambiguous ending, it didn't

was I didn't get any closure one way or

Reegs: I felt that he was just like, this is,

Cris: Yeah, I thought he

Reegs: I've, I've had this a crazy, incredible plan that's come off and it's been,

Cris: There's no proof of a gun that he's holding. He couldn't get a

Reegs: Yeah, he's

Cris: were right in front of him. That's kind of the way I felt was like, I'm not going anywhere

Reegs: He's he's what the different

Cris: now or whatever and

Sidey: I thought there was maybe a suicide by cop about to happen.

Reegs: Here's what's the difference is just him giving up, isn't it? To the universe. Like you can, the best laid plans and it can be undone by a fucking poodle.

That's basically, you know, you've got this, we've seen this incredible elaborate plan and that's the world, that's the universe. And it's a theme that Kubrick comes back to again and again in his movies about human fallibility, undoing

Cris: beauty of it is that they're all dead, all his partners are dead.

Everyone. Yeah. So he would have the whole like,

Sidey: all the money but

Cris: for the poodle,

Reegs: yeah,

Dan: Yeah, so I've seen this before and I was happy to watch it again.

It's it'd been a little while. It's a brilliantly paced movie. It does jump around a lot. There's a couple of sections that, that slow the film a little bit, I guess. I mean, it's 1950s. You would

think

Sidey: So, the studio hated it.

Yeah.

Well, test screenings were not positive and so, they made them recut it um in a in a linear fashion which Kubrick hated and the voiceover was an addition which is why a lot of the voiceover stuff is inaccurate. Kubrick did that on purpose to be annoying.

Right. But I think it's So he hated all that studio interference. He didn't take a fee for this film. I thought it was quite interesting. To me it just screams like Reservoir Dogs.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, I mean this is it. Oh, I imagine there's been a lot of films influenced by this one And just the approach on it The the actors aren't probably anyone you've heard of or seen before apart from those ones that do look like william macy and john taruto

Sidey: Well, Sterling Hayden was this moderately

Dan: would

Sidey: star. He was the, he was who, he got the biggest fee. The movie cost 320, 000 to make. I don't know that I believe this box office stat, but I did find it on multiple sources.

So what do you reckon it made? no. 398.

Not thousands. It's return, isn't it? Not really.

Reegs: It's

Sidey: though. It's fucking great.

awesome.

Dan: You talked about

Sidey: well. you talked about the

themes that Kubrick returns to.

I didn't really get any of the visual style coming through yet.

Reegs: There was one there's the dolly shot when George comes into his apartment and we move through the room as he comes in and it

He's taken a wall out of the apartment and it follows him along through and there's sometimes objects right in front of the camera

Sidey: that goes through

Reegs: it and all that stuff.

That was quite neat. But yeah, there wasn't a lot of that, but this was still quite early on,

Sidey: oh, Yeah,

Dan: it's nice to, you know, Have that early work and, and see and the fact that it's such a, a great film, I thought it was his debut, to be honest. I dunno the other films that he's done, but before this one, but I've seen it.

Yeah, sort of two or three times. I watch it again in the future at some point, this

Sidey: What?

do you reckon chris,

Cris: this was good. I've never even heard of it before. And when I've seen a movie from the fifties, I was a bit off.

Reegs: Yeah can be a bit like that. Yeah, this is

Cris: gonna be painful. But it's been I thought for a movie from the fifties brilliant.

It's on Amazon Prime and the quality of the picture. My TV is not, it's a nice TV, it's not the ultra 4 or 5K whatever, it's a nice TV, but the quality of the picture was really good. If you would, for me it was one of them that if you would have been shot,

Reegs: some nice shots of some film noir type things

Cris: but if you, if that would have been, if you want to make a movie these days with all these fancy cameras and all that, and you would want to put it in and just film it in black and white.

It would look very similar to that. It's such a clear and clean image, even in the darker bits, even in, I thought it looked really glossy and really nicely shot. Obviously when the guy tries to shoot the horse, you can clearly see it's a screen and you know,

that's, that's the 1950s, but where it was in the rooms and the way it was acted, I have to say, I found Sherry really fucking annoying

Reegs: as an actress, you mean?

'cause the character is supposed to be annoying,

Cris: yeah, but, but just like, Surely these people don't exist.

Reegs: gold digging, humiliating.

Cris: No, the husband, the husband to just put up with that and not just throw her stuff out the door and just leave her to it. Oh,

Reegs: he loves her.

Cris: fix me a drink.

Reegs: He loves her.

Cris: Chris. Do

Dan: It's love Chris.

It's love.

Reegs: He loves her.

Dan: He loves her.

Cris: I'm not having

Sidey: not

Dan: having it. Chris isn't having it,

Cris: I'm not having it.

But the movie was

Dan: but the movie was

Sidey: but so really kind of Not complex plot, but it's it's

Cris: Yes. Yeah. It was

Sidey: But the pacing is great and hello fucking 85 minutes runtime doesn't need to be fucking three hours. Do you know what I mean?

Cris: brilliant. I really enjoyed it. And I was, I watched it last night with Kara. Kara was in the room. She didn't really necessarily watch the whole thing, but she's like, Oh, did you enjoy this?

I was like, you know what? This was way better than I thought. And for a 1950s movie, this is brilliant. Brilliant. I didn't get bored a minute. I kind of got involved with all the characters. I really liked everyone the way they acted. I don't think anyone was out of place. The chess guy, the wrestler, hairy man with the back.

I thought he was quite funny. And the way he spoke was very with an accent, but very articulate, as in

Had his

Reegs: The actor basically was that guy in real life, an ex Russian chess playing wrestling con. Yeah.

Cris: okay, okay. But I thought, I thought the movie itself was, was good. And with the way it started, the only thing I was slightly annoyed with was the overuse of the same image of the horse racing beginning.

It was the same thing that they did the whole, the whole thing, the beginning when they bring the horses in with

Reegs: and they showed it again.

They

Cris: showed it again. No, they showed about four times or five times. And it's like, I can't do the same thing. I even managed to see the guy kind of slapping a horse because it was so many times that I kind of looked at the same guy over and over again.

Other than that, brilliant.

Reegs: I'd never seen it and this was great.

I had a suspicion it was going to be, it was Kubrick, right? But I was still surprised at how good it was and I didn't know before going into it about the non linear thing and it just, like you say, makes the pace absolutely superb. So yeah, strong recommend.

Cris: Yeah, strong.