The Killers

This is about as noir as it gets. It stars Burt Lancaster (his first film, and the star quality is obvious), is from a story by Ernest Hemingway with a script by Anthony Veiller, Richard Brooks, and (uncredited) John Huston. Ava Gardner is the bad, bad girl, and Edmond O’Brien is the insurance investigator trying to unravel Lancaster’s murder. He is killed in the first few minutes, unresisting, obviously having given up on life, and the rest of the story is told in flashbacks. It’s a damn good story.