The Killers (EOWTS)

End Of The Week Shorts #12.1 extract: The Killers (1956)

An incite into a master's earliest works, The Killers is Andrei Tarkovsky's first film that he made as a student attending VGIK. It is an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story of the same name and is centred on a bar that two gangsters enter with the intention of assassinating a boxer. 

Co-written and co-directed by Tarkovsky, you could argue that this isn't really his film, however, he did propose this idea and he did direct the majority of the film (2 of the 3 scenes). So, assessing this as a film of his, it is little more than an opening act that only begins to imply a more complex and compelling narrative of a competently directed and written film - nothing that is transcendent or particularly indicative of what Tarkovsky would go on to do in his later features. 

This will be a good watch for anyone interested in the career of Tarkovsky - maybe of Hemingway adaptations too - but little more than just that.