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This is part 1 of 12 of my retrospective of Stanley Kubrick’s career.

While this is not Kubrick’s directorial debut, it is his first praised movie, so this is where I’ll start. It is difficult to review this movie on its own merits rather than blindly praising it based on the director’s future works, so I’ll have to review it as if it was simply another “film noir” from his time. Which is still difficult, considering I don’t particularly like film noir nor heist stories.

The movie is quite short (barely 90 minutes), and even then, the first half of the movie is quite slow. The scenes are moody, both from the corny dialog and good cinematography and lighting. Many of the actors are quite stiff, though that may have been the norm for the style and times.

The movie picks up drastically in the second half where the heist takes place, and this is when it fully lives up to our expectations for both a heist movie and a dark movie. The narration, jumping a little bit forwards and back in time, works very well. The pacing is amazing and doesn’t waste any time. Oddly enough, the acting that was stiff in the first part changes to something far more nuanced and interesting.

So, it’s a well directed and well-told story, and you don’t need to be a fan of the genre to appreciate it.