The Killers (1946 Film) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

When the film was first released, Bosley Crowther gave it a positive review and lauded the acting. He wrote, " a film called The Killers, which was the title of the Hemingway piece, Mark Hellinger and Anthony Veiller are filling out the plot. That is, they are cleverly explaining, through a flashback reconstruction of the life of that man who lay sweating in his bedroom, why the gunmen were after him. And although it may not be precisely what Hemingway had in mind, it makes a taut and absorbing explanation.... With Robert Siodmak's restrained direction, a new actor, Burt Lancaster, gives a lanky and wistful imitation of a nice guy who's wooed to his ruin. And Ava Gardner is sultry and sardonic as the lady who crosses him up. Edmond O'Brien plays the shrewd investigator in the usual cool and clipped detective style, Sam Levene is very good as a policeman and Albert Dekker makes a thoroughly nasty thug. Several other characters are sharply and colorfully played. The tempo is slow and metronomic, which makes for less excitement than suspense."

In a review of the DVD release, Scott Tobias, while critical of the screenplay, described the drama's noir style, writing, "Lifted note-for-note from the Hemingway story, the classic opening scene of Siodmak's film sings with the high tension, sharp dialogue, and grim humor that's conspicuously absent from the rest of Anthony Veiller's mediocre screenplay. Taking a page out of the Double Indemnity playbook, Veiller has insurance adjuster Edmond O'Brien investigate after the murder takes place, but it's never really clear why he's so passionate about the case. A lean block of muscles and little else, Burt Lancaster stars as the hapless victim, an ex-boxer who was unwittingly roped into the criminal underworld and the even more dangerous gaze of Ava Gardner, a memorably sultry and duplicitous femme fatale. The story plays strictly by the crime-genre rules, including a $250,000 payroll caper, but Siodmak (Criss Cross, The Spiral Staircase), a director from the German Expressionist school, sustains a fatalistic tone with the atmospheric touches that define noir, favoring stark lighting effects that throw his post-war world into shadow."

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 100 percent of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 29 reviews.