Movie Reviews by Edwin Jahiel

THE KILLERS (1946)

Tiny Hemingway story about "the Swede", a man who accepts his execution by thugs, becomes a very faithful movie start. Then it is developed into elaborate structure that explains the mystery as people talk to an insurance investigator. The same technique of many flashbacks will be used later in another Hemingway stry, "The Snows Of Kilimanjaro" (1952). Impressive first role for Burt Lancaster. Ava Gardner is the bad girl, Edmond O'Brien the insurance man, Sam Levene a Philadelphia Police lieutenant. Excellent, large supporting cast , many from the familiar roster of movie thugs and villains. Film's main weakness is that we see and know much more than the investigator does or anyone else. The beginning is promising, moody and Teutonically fatalistic, typical of German (but Memphis, TN-born) director Robert Siodmak. The rest, is rather ordinary, has improbabilities, but is still good and well paced. An uncredited John Huston helped with the script and Miklos Rozsa's music later becomes the "Dragnet" theme. Film was remade with Ronald Reagan, in his last role, as a brutal villain. (Edwin Jahiel)