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Quentin Tarantino is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers in the industry. He has given the world some of the most commendable cinematic works, whether Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But even a filmmaker as bold and unique as Tarantino had his influences. And one of the biggest? Stanley Kubrick. Specifically, Kubrick’s 1956 film The Killing played a huge role in shaping how Tarantino approached his own debut, Reservoir Dogs.
Released in the mid-1950s, The Killing marked a turning point in Kubrick’s career. Until then, he had only made a few smaller films, but The Killing was his first real entry into Hollywood filmmaking. The story, adapted from the novel Clean Break by Lionel White, follows a group of men planning and carrying out a racetrack heist. Kubrick’s telling of the story set it apart: it didn’t follow a straight timeline. Instead, the film jumped around in time, showed the same event from multiple perspectives, and kept the audience on their toes.
For its time, that kind of structure was groundbreaking. Stanley Kubrick didn’t just tell a heist story but elevated the entire genre with his breakthrough film. It’s no wonder that decades later, it left such a strong impression on a then-young filmmaker named Quentin Tarantino.
