Key Largo (Keepcase)
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Movie Reviews of Key Largo (Keepcase)
Movie Review: 7.5 - Thrilling
Summary: 4 Stars
Awesome film. Obviously inspired by films like "Casablanca", Bogey is an amoral man stuck in a dangerous setting. The cast is great, but Lauren Bacall really doesn't get much to do in this. The climax really had me on the edge of my seats. Classic suspense and clever plot twists. Anyone can enjoy this one.Movie Review: classic
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a superb, classic flick. I just love the nuances of each scene. And the heat between Bogart and Bacall is palpable, even though their characters just met in this movie. Great fun.Movie Review: The film may lack substance and coherence but it is first-rate drama and entertainment...
Summary: 3 Stars
It is difficult to resist the temptation to compare William Wyler's "The Desperate Hours" with John Huston's "Key Largo."
Here again the drama arose when a gangster and his thugs sought a temporary hideout by moving in on an innocent family, and were unable to get away until a raging hurricane had blown itself out...
The family were Lionel Barrymore, complete with wheelchair, and Lauren Bacall, apparently without make-up--stunningly attractive... Their home was a small hotel in Florida, and "just passing through" was a tough and somewhat mixed-up good guy Humphrey Bogart... The gangster was Edward G. Robinson...
For Bogart "Key Largo" was another "The Petrified Forest," but this time he was the disenchanted idealist and Edward G. Robinson the vicious, antiquated symbol of raw brute force...
Paul Muni had appeared in the original Maxwell Anderson play in 1939, and director John Huston and Richard Brooks updated the piece to make it more contemporary... As a film, it was treated in a slightly heavy-handed, overly talky manner, displacing action in favor of strong character studies of a group of disparate individuals trapped by a kingpin gangster...
Claire Trevor won an Academy Award as Gaye Dawn, Rocco's boozy mistress who was willing to lower herself to any depths for the mere expedient of getting a drink... She is finally pushed too far by Rocco, has accepted too many insults and been rejected once too often, so she decides to help the besieged prisoners...
Lauren Bacall was Nora Temple, an antiseptic dreamer who persisted in believing that evil should always be opposed by a valiant Sir Galahad and temporarily has her illusions shattered when Bogart apparently doesn't agree to fit into her mold...
As Bacall's grandfather, Lionel Barrymore was another heroic figure who, could afford to be a verbal hero, knowing that a retreat to the safety of his confining wheelchair could protect him...
Edward G. Robinson as Rocco was a mass of contradictions... Brutal with a gun safely in his hand, dreaming of the glories he once knew in the good old days when he was a big shot, all he has left are the memories... He was a man whose criminal wisdom permits no ethics and few feelings... He offers Bogart an empty gun to shoot it out with him... He is also a man afraid, who sweats when the hurricane approaches and poses a threat to his safety... He detests Bogart because of his wartime heroism, mocking and taunting him because his courage is something differing in Rocco's own unheroic life...
As war hero Frank McCloud, Bogart was the most complex character of all... Disillusioned, tired of his war-induced killings, unwilling to risk himself in any new test of courage ("One Rocco more or less isn't worth dying for"), he is now a complacent shadow of his former noble self... He, like Barrymore, seeks an idyllic world where "there's no place for Johnny Rocco." However, his pattern has been too well established... He, like Claire Trevor, can be pushed only so far and then reason and restraint seem no longer acceptable as an alternative to action...
With such a cast "Key Largo" could not fall to hold the attention... Yet, for all its workmanlike craft, it did not reach the level of Wyler's "The Desperate Hours." Bogart, as a disillusioned war veteran who could not rouse himself to action until the last few minutes, left one frustrated: looking for the vicious power that he was to show as the gangster in the later film...
Edward G. Robinson, commanding, convincing, was still not so coldly frightening a villain as Humphrey Bogart... And, one can imagine how the idea of the storming hurricane appealed at the time... The violence and the drama outside, as the wind tore at the palm trees and the waves threatened to swallow the little wooden hotel, would surely underscore and heighten the tensions within... Not so! And not only because the studio storm was not always up to nature's level...
What William Wyler realized was that the suspense of innocence trapped as hostages by wickedness was vastly heightened by the contrast with a quiet, undramatic, everyday setting... No hurricane was needed to put the desperation in "The Desperate Hours."
Movie Review: Interesting John Huston classic
Summary: 3 Stars
3 1/2 stars
Although not one of Huston's best at all, it still shows the marks of his talents. At plain sight, and without going into the story, we have some nice shots at locations on the Florida Keys. We have the always lovable presence of Lionel Barrymore; we have Edward G. Robinson, as the bad guy; and we have the charming couple: Bogart & Bacall. The cast is great.
But the film fails to convey emotion or thrill. I would say that it lacks a heroe, a clear cut character. Maybe that was the purpose. In that case what we have here is a character study, mainly of Bogart -the ex-GI- in contrast to his friend killed in action (who's supposed to be the heroe in abscence of the film). Bogart is 'the wise guy', for refusing to risk his life to kill Robinson, which also makes him a coward (or so it would seem). Robinson, the bad guy, is also a character more complicated than prejudices would have us think. He is the real coward. And then there are more secondary characters that are also worth a look.
But I think it's too much meat for this film. It just doesn't deliver well. Unless I need to see it again more times. It can be.
As an afterthought: I didn't understand what role the Indians played in this movie. "We always end up hurting them, no matter if we try to help them or not." Maybe the book is clearer, but in this film I don't see the connection.
Movie Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Summary: 3 Stars
The Bottom Line:
A movie that feels limited when it should feel claustrophobic, Key Largo has an undeserved reputation of a classic when in fact it's one of Huston's weaker films; with a predictable climax and an uninspired turn by Bogey, it's not a film you should prioritize in your Netflix queue.