The Killers

“The only man who’s not afraid to die is the man who’s dead already.” Viewers are advised to watch and appreciate Don Siegel’s The Killers as an original, standalone film rather than as a remake of Robert Siodmak’s 1946 masterpiece of the same name for two reasons: first, because there’s no comparison, and second, because, while they share a source, they tell very different stories. While Siodmak’s film uses the hitmen as supporting characters in a couple of scenes, Siegel tells the story entirely through their eyes, replacing Edmond O’Brien’s insurance investigator with contract killer Charlie Strom (the exhilarating Lee Marvin) and his young sidekick Lee (Clu Galager), who, after killing the nonresistant Johnny North (John Cassavetes) inside a school for the blind where he’d been hiding out, decide to track down the people who led him to such a point of suicidal desolation. In flashback, we learn that North had been a racecar driver who fell for the duplicitous Sheila Farr (Angie Dickinson), the mistress of gangster Jack Browning (Ronald Reagan) who uses Sheila to lure North into driving for his mail truck robbery. Originally produced for television but given a theatrical run instead, the film features one of the earliest scores by John (“Johnny”) Williams, but also reuses music from Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) for its opening and closing credits sequences. Future President Ronald Reagan later lamented his role in the film, which was his only role as a villain (at one point he belts Sheila in the face) and the final film of his career.