1946 film noir. First film for Burt Lancaster. Did not know he was a circus acrobat, but it makes sense watching some of this later films. Gardner was beautiful and of course treacherous. Charles McGraw and William Conrad are the killers. William Conrad certainly played the tough guy role, just like Raymond Burr in the old days. Some may remember the TV show Cannon where he played the detective with a revolver.

The film was based on a Hemmingway short story. Enjoyable.

Reminds me the John Woo directed "The Killer" movie made in the 80's.

quote:

Originally posted by Plasteek:
Reminds me the John Woo directed "The Killer" movie made in the 80's.

The only thing those two films have in common is a similar title. The Killers was remade, but it was in 1964, and it was Ronald Reagan's last film.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058262/

quote:

Originally posted by Plasteek:
Reminds me the John Woo directed "The Killer" movie made in the 80's.

Featured Chow Yun-Fat who was also in another Woo film, "The Replacement Killers" which had Mira Sorvino at her hottest.

quote:

Originally posted by Blackmore:

quote:

Originally posted by Plasteek:
Reminds me the John Woo directed "The Killer" movie made in the 80's.

Featured Chow Yun-Fat who was also in another Woo film, "The Replacement Killers" which had Mira Sorvino at her hottest.

Was a classic movie. The Jon wich at the time.

I was hoping you were talking about the 1964 Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager movie, The Killers.

Haven’t seen it in years.

The 1964 version of The Killers was intended to be a made-for-TV movie, but the network on which it was supposed to air thought the film too violent for television, so the film was released theatrically. Quite a sight to see Ronald Reagan slapping around a woman, calling her "baby" and so forth. Clu Gallager and Lee Marvin as the gunmen. Marvin sports a S&W 357 Magnum with a 6.5" barrel and a silencer, which is always fun to see on a revolver. Shot in color, it's an OK film, but the '46 version is far and away the better version.

I recall that the story on which the movie was based was very short and most of the plot padded on to it.

That's putting it mildly. You can read the entire (very) short story here. Everything in the Hemingway story takes place in the first sequence of the 1946 version of The Killers and does not include the murder. Almost everything in the film was created by screen writer Anthony Veiller, with uncredited contributions by John Huston and Richard Brooks.

You can thank a producer by the name of Mark Hellinger for this film. Unfortunately, Hellinger died at a very young age the year following the release of The Killers. There are some top-notch crime films that don't exist due to his untimely death. Very sad to think of what didn't get made because he died of a heart attack at the age of 44. We'll never know.