The Killing

Tarantino has repeatedly named Kubrick's racetrack heist as the model for Reservoir Dogs, and what he took is the structure rather than the plot: a robbery told out of chronological order, doubling back to follow each member of the crew through the same hours. The interesting part is where Reservoir Dogs goes further. The Killing SHOWS its robbery, in detail and more than once, from different vantage points; Tarantino keeps the heist off screen entirely and gives the audience only the planning and the aftermath in a warehouse. He took Kubrick's fractured chronology and used it to withhold the thing the structure was built to reveal.

Kubrick has named The Asphalt Jungle as the film he was working from, and the two share an author of sorts: Huston established the form in 1950 and Kubrick filmed Lionel White's racetrack novel six years later inside it. The inheritance is the professional crew assembled for one job, the plan explained to the audience in advance, and a failure that comes from the men rather than from the police. Kubrick's addition is the fractured chronology, which runs the same afternoon several times from different positions. Sterling Hayden leads both films, which is the least subtle part of the debt.