Key Largo (1948)

Really Surprised!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edgar Robinson, Lionel Barrymore. Key Largo in the middle of a hurricane. A gangster is using a dead WW2 vets hotel as a meeting point, and his shenanigans get Bogie, visiting his dead friends family, involved. A fast moving, excellent movie that still holds up today thanks to John Huston's brilliant directing.

Has closeups when needed for emphasis. my favorite line by Johnny Rocco "anybody wanna buy a hero cheap?"............... turns out he really was a hero but needed to choose his opportunity.

What's so great about Film-noir's is that they thrust the audience into uncomfortable and alienating situations. While Key Largo is in most ways a lighter noir, it still creates a great amount dread and ominous situations, all a tribute to John Huston's wonderful direction here. Key Largo re-teamed Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall for the 4th and final time and it is yet another gem in their resumes. Lionel Barrymore, Edward G. Robinson, and Claire Trevor round out a tremendously talented cast. It helps that Key Largo is based on a play which gives the actors plenty of room to thrive in this crime drama film noir. Trevor won the Oscar for supporting actress and she's incredible, but Barrymore never fails to amaze me in a wheelchair. Between this, You Can't Take it With You, and It's a Wonderful Life, he has gave me some of the most enjoyable movie experiences, so thank you Mr. Barrymore.The film delves into a man's (Bogart) post World War II trip to his friends hotel when they are stranded with a bunch of gangsters during a hurricane. The premise itself thrives as a stage production by it also manages to give us an engaging and thrilling cinematic experience as well. I love how there is never any real assurance from the writing or direction that this film will be a happy ending, which makes it such a great noir. A hurricane and a bunch of gangsters? The only actor qualified for such circumstances has to be the one and only Humphrey Bogart.In all seriousness, Key Largo is a really good film. With a setting that sticks to the confinement of the hotel for 90% of the film, I can't speak highly enough of the directing and acting. It's difficult to make an action film with plenty of vivacious settings to be engaging for 90 minutes but Key Largo manages to it with one hotel, that's impressive. The character arcs of both Robinson's Johnny Rocco and Bogart's Frank Mcloud are interestingly paralleled. Both have nowhere to go or fit in and they both plenty of desires and hopes. To me, the scenes between both of them were the most fascinating. So overall, Key Largo is a classic. It gives you everything you want from a noir standpoint, while also creating a solid crime thriller in the process.+Direction+Barrymore always steals the show+Noir elements8.7/10

That rumble you hear over the Florida Keys isn't just thunder from an oncoming hurricane, it's two giants of Warner Bros.' classic gangster movies having one final on-screen brawl. And one of them brought his dame with him.For the purposes of the film, that would be Edward G. Robinson's Johnny Rocco character, a semi-retired mobster who moves into a hotel in Key Largo off-season to make a big score, taking with him a few of his boys and an old flame, Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor).Humphrey Bogart's Frank McCloud is a former Army major who fought in Italy, and comes to pay his respects to the father (Lionel Barrymore) and widow (Lauren Bacall) of a fallen comrade, who run the same hotel. He's not a gangster this time, but he's still a tough guy, as Rocco and his bulls find out when they try and take McCloud for a ride."Key Largo" is a brilliantly acted, moody and suspenseful film worthy of the talents of all concerned, including director/co- screenwriter John Huston. It's got a distinct Hemingway vibe about it, kind of "Soldier's Home" meets "The Killers" with McCloud a sort of Nick Adams figure. He hardly says very much, but he makes you pay attention when he does speak. (Bogart and Bacall earlier made a movie based on a Hemingway novel that didn't seem much like Papa at all!)Trevor won the film's lone Oscar, and deserved it, but Robinson steals the picture. As mark.waltz points out in his July 2012 review here, the name seems a callback to the crime-boss character Rico that Robinson played in "Little Caesar," and he's still the same trigger-happy dumbbell here that he was then. He exudes menace and cruelty, and also a sense of bewildered helplessness at his present condition that's rather affecting:"After living in the USA for more than 30 years, they called me an undesirable alien. Me, Johnny Rocco. Like I was a dirty Red or sumthin!"The gang around him is great, too, hard-boiled stereotypes but quite well acted. I particularly enjoyed Thomas Gomez as Curly, Rocco's number-two. He chews a mean wad of gum and has a hilarious monologue while trying to distract an angry Rocco about people bringing back Prohibition so the gangsters can have the old days back.What I don't like so much about the film is the odd subtext, which plays up McCloud's current disillusionment on account of Rocco being present. Did he really think World War II was the war to end gangsterism?There's also a subplot about some local Seminoles who huddle around the hotel when the hurricane strikes. You kind of need them late in the film for the tragedy that triggers McCloud's late burst of action, but it doesn't make any sense on its own. It feels tacked on and a bit stagey, like much else in this film.And what's with the anger directed at McCloud for not plugging Rocco? Did that scene ever make sense as a display of apparent cowardice on McCloud's part? What was he supposed to do?Max Steiner's overbearing score is another letdown. I didn't even think much of the final confrontation between McCloud and Rocco's gang. It's a bit too easy and low-key.But what's good about "Key Largo" outweighs what's not. Bacall does fine work playing a part rather than burnishing her star power, and Bogart shows how to let another screen legend (Robinson) rant on and on without losing his own magnetism. And did anyone make a shave seem as hilarious and terrifying as Edward G.?