Sterling Hayden delivers one of his iconic performances in The Killing as fast-talking criminal Johnny Clay, a consummate professional whose pre-planned perfectionism makes him an enticing surrogate for Kubrick the director. Johnny’s single-minded pursuit of a racetrack heist that will yield him a career-ending amount of money drives the film’s exacting narrative structure, a process of team-building and strategizing that resembles the pre-production stage of a film. Rounding out Johnny’s crew are noir stalwarts like Timothy Carey, Ted de Corsia and Elisha Cook Jr., and the hard-boiled banter between these actors establishes a false sense of security that Kubrick ultimately upends in a series of seemingly trivial slip-ups that breed catastrophic results. The Killing’s mature understanding of the role of chance and randomness in otherwise mathematically orchestrated designs is paired with precise, detached camerawork offset by moments of disorienting violence. This seamless match of form and content set a template for Kubrick’s larger body of work.