The Killers (1946)

THE KILLERS  (1946)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Robert Siodmak
    Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien,
    Albert Dekker, William Conrad, Charles McGraw
Neatly plotted film noir about a payroll robbery and its aftermath, based partly on the Hemingway short story. Lancaster plays a doomed ex-boxer, Gardner's the femme fatale, and they get top billing, but the actor who holds the piece together is Edmond O'Brien as the cocky insurance investigator who cracks the case. Flashbacks tell the story, not always in chronological order. (The nonlinear story structure would not be lost on Quentin Tarantino.) The double-crossers all get double-crossed here. Lancaster's first film.