The Killing (1956)

 "It isn't fair!"

This early film by Stanley Kubrick has no stars- hardly the last of his films to fit this description- and I took the quote from a parrot. The narrative structure is cleverly non-linear but the use of narration to explain this feels a little awkward in 2023. Yet this is a stone cold classic, a truly great heist film.

Heist movies are more intrinsically philosophical than you might think. A heist consists of an intricate, precise plan where all the many moving parts must work perfectly.  Yet even the best laid plans must take place in our chaotic little universe. Even in successful heists, little things go wrong that create ripples. As hrere, it's after the apparently successful heist that things go horribly pear-shaped for most. I suppose one moral is that crime doesn't pay, but more fundamentally that we do not live in a clockwork universe and there are no happy-ever-after. This film articulates all of that beautifully, the heist as tragedy.

It does this all the more so because of the very real characters, already tragic before anything happens. We know from the beginning that Johnny Clay's promises to his sweetheart are doomed to fail. Only just out ofv a five year stretch, instead of marrying her he will be going back inside. Then there's the horribly real unhappy couple that is Sherry and George- she's far more intelligent, greedy and immoral than the wet drip she married. The two relationships are quite the contrast, but both equally doomed.

Even the little characters are well crafted. I like Nikki's comeuppance for his racism, and that Maurice, the thug whose role is to start a fight, is a chess-playing intellectual.

This film has depth. It has characterisation. It is a masterpiece.