Perfect cast and a good story

It is a performances centric movie

Absolutely brilliant

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

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.

Much like the 40s Lancaster vehicle, this Don Siegel-directed flick takes Hemingway's short story as a starting point to a noir classic. On paper, the differences are relatively minute, but in execution, these could not be further apart.Gone is the scale and class of the gorgeous B&W original, and in comes a gritty, grainy, dynamic cinematic pit-bull. It's not Siegel's most polished work, but it might just be his most inventive and playful, from a cringe-worthy opening scene in a clinic for the blind to a coldly pessimistic ending by way of racetrack madness and hanging femme fatales out of windows. Siegel makes the most of a modest budget and, as in most of his work, uses it to create a pedestal for his cast and their performances. And what a cast...It takes too many expletives to praise Lee Marvin in general, and especially here, so if you have any interest in him, go see this now. What you also get but hadn't bargained for, is a superbly reptilian villain from Ronald Reagan (!?!), who also shares a scene for the ages with a scheming Angie Dickinson. Much of the fuss around this film tends to be made in regards to a psychotic Clu Gulager, and it is well deserved, but that would be overlooking the man who anchors the whole show: John Cassavetes. Beyond giving the proceedings a strange aura of respectability, he generously gives it a tragic sense of reality that makes the surrounding characters more believable.You often find people compare this to Pulp Fiction when grasping for film references. This probably sets up unfair expectations, not least of which the idea that a streamlined, 90-minute film noir might have anything in common with a 150- minute "epic". But it is indeed pulp, and of the highest order. It is also, arguably a better film.A little diamond in the rough, worth seeking out.

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

A confused hybrid of a film that's got one foot in the future and the other in the past, both in story and in technique. Lee Marvin steals the show as the brains behind a two-man assassination outfit, confounded by the willingness of a recent target to meet his ultimate fate. With time and money at their disposal, the pair decides to investigate what kind of circumstance could make a man happy to see them, ultimately uncovering a complex heist-gone-bad. Marvin and his permanently sunglassed cohort play strongly sympathetic bad seeds, two charismatic characters who aren't afraid to take what they want when they see it. Unfortunately, they also play second fiddle to a series of recklessly crisscrossed flashback sequences that range from redundant to confusing to outright dull, without a central character half as interesting as the killers themselves. Painfully bad special effects, a phoned-in performance by Ronald Reagan (in his final film role) and a flat, unfulfilling ending drop this far short of its potential.