The Killers

A confused hybrid of a film that's got one foot in the future and the other in the past, both in story and in technique. Lee Marvin steals the show as the brains behind a two-man assassination outfit, confounded by the willingness of a recent target to meet his ultimate fate. With time and money at their disposal, the hitmen decide to investigate what kind of circumstance could make a man happy to see them, ultimately uncovering a complex heist-gone-bad. Marvin and his permanently sunglassed cohort play strongly sympathetic bad seeds, two charismatic characters who aren't afraid to take what they want when they see it. Unfortunately, they also play second fiddle to a series of recklessly crisscrossed flashback sequences that range from redundant to confusing to outright dull, without a central character half as interesting as the killers themselves. Painfully bad special effects, a phoned-in performance by Ronald Reagan (in his final film role) and a flat, unfulfilling ending drop this far short of its potential.