A classic

Since it is a huge classic, I really had to see this at some point. The fact that it is Michael Caine’s favorite movie of all time made it even more attractive to me. Honestly, I have to admit I’m not really knowledgeable about Humphrey Bogart and I only saw 5 movies starring this guy before watching this flick. The first thing that really stroke me is the character portrayed by Bogart. Indeed, so far, even though I thought he was a pretty good actor, he seemed to have a rather limited range since he always played the same character over and over again, the cool no-nonsense anti-hero with the heart in the right place. Not this time though, that’s for sure. Indeed, this time, he was something completely different, some kind of pathetic paranoid back-stabbing SOB and he did it brilliantly. He definitely showed some balls to portray such a character against his usual image and at the height of his popularity. I was quite blown away by his performance and it is his best performance, at least among the movies I have seen. Walter Huston was also really awesome and, apparently, John Huston was immensely proud of the fact that his father finally won an Academy award in his own movie. So, indeed, it is a movie dealing with gold searching and they do find some gold but that was evidently not the point here. No, what makes this movie so fascinating, were the characters and their evolution, especially the evolution of the now infamous Fred C. Dobbs. I also liked the way Huston’s character always stay cool under the circumstances as you can imagine that this guy has been down this road many times before but you never get any confirmation. To conclude, it is a classic, I really enjoyed it and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

8/10