Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing hit theaters in 1956 with bold ideas and a sharp edge. But audiences didn’t respond. The racetrack heist thriller fizzled at the box office. Its daring structure and nonlinear style may have been too much for the time. Yet years later, it helped inspire one of modern cinema’s most iconic debuts.
Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs exploded onto the scene in 1992. But the blueprint had been drawn decades earlier. In a 1992 interview, Tarantino openly credited The Killing as his inspiration. “My take on that kind of heist movie,” he said, as reported by News 18. At the Reservoir Dogs premiere at Cannes, he went even further. He called it his favorite heist film.
Kubrick’s film, based on Lionel White’s novel Clean Break, follows a group of men plotting a racetrack robbery. But it avoids a typical timeline. It jumps between characters and rewinds time. This fragmented style confused many in 1956. Still, it was a sign of what cinema could become.
Stanley Kubrick and Tarantino: A New Spin on an Old Structure
Decades later, Tarantino picked up where Kubrick left off. He reworked the same structure for Reservoir Dogs. This time, the heist wasn’t at a racetrack—it was about diamonds. And the criminals had color-coded names like Mr. White and Mr. Blonde.
The cast featured Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, and Michael Madsen. The story played out mostly in a warehouse after the heist falls apart. The tension simmered, then exploded. The influence of The Killing was clear: chopped-up timelines, layered perspectives, and slow-burning suspense.
The budget of Reservoir Dogs was so low, actors had to provide their own clothing. pic.twitter.com/SoCHTe6ykY
— Quentin Tarantino Universe (@TarantinoWorld) November 29, 2023
Tarantino pushed the limits of structure and space. One scene, in particular, almost didn’t make the cut. In a conversation with Film Comment, he shared that producers were unsure. The scene where Buscemi and Keitel circle each other—before Madsen bursts in—felt too static. “They’d read it and go, ‘This isn’t a movie, this is a play,’” Tarantino recalled. One producer even suggested staging it in a small theater.
But Tarantino stood firm. “No, no, no, trust me, it’ll be cinematic,” he told them.
He was right. By keeping the action mostly confined and letting the actors lead, the tension became almost unbearable. “It plays with theatrical elements in a cinematic form,” Tarantino explained. The pacing, the rhythm, and the confined space all worked in harmony.
Kubrick’s The Killing may have failed to connect in its own time. But it helped shape a film that changed indie cinema forever.
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