The Frame

Loosely based on one of Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams short stories, the 1946 version of The Killers tells of a washed-up boxer and his involvement with a crime ring that later comes around to haunt him. It’s always interesting to see adaptations of short stories, simply because so much as to be added to make a full-length film. After watching this, I found the story and read it, and it’s basically just the first scene of the film, which shows two strangers enter a diner, intending to kill a man known as the Swede when he comes in for dinner–when he doesn’t come in, Nick Adams, one of the diner’s patrons, runs off to warn him, but he’s tired of running from his past and succumbs. The movie takes off from there to tell us the backstory. It’s a noirish approach, and works very well. A young Burt Lancaster as the Swede and a young Ava Gardner as the obligatory femme fatale don’t hurt either.
Above Average