The Killers

The director Don Siegel’s Technicolor film noir, from 1964—very loosely based on Ernest Hemingway’s darkly comic story of death and its dealers—displays the seamy side of life in sharp graphic lines. It’s centered on a pair of sardonically brutal hit men (Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager) who pursue their work with a sinister glee. After gunning down their target, a race-car driver (John Cassavetes), they begin to suspect that there’s big money at stake, and they set out to get it. Their quest takes them to Miami, New Orleans, and Los Angeles; the story of a million missing dollars is revealed in flashbacks that involve a femme fatale (Angie Dickinson) and her sugar daddy (Ronald Reagan, in his last movie role), a twisted love affair, and a heist gone awry. As in Hemingway’s story, the killers are a couple of cutups; Gulager and Marvin bring a weird and wicked sense of humor to the hit men’s dirty work. Siegel’s terse, seething, and stylish direction glows with the blank radiance of sheet metal in sunlight; the movie’s bright primary colors and glossy luxuries are imbued with menace, and its luminous delights convey a terrifyingly cold world view.(Quad Cinema, April 11)