keylargo




				Key Largo (1948): 4 Stars Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, directed by John Huston


	Being a frequent visitor to the Keys myself (I have family there), I wanted to see if this movie could capture the natural beauty of the place and put it on screen. A place where people own as many boats as they do cars, there's only one main road, and it's never more than a five minute walk from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, the Keys have a unique low-key atmosphere with a serene sense of quietness. The black-and-white photography did indeed live up to my expectations, bringing the Keys of fifty years ago to life. Going slightly out of order, I'll now give the basics of the story, which starts out with one of the most original first twenty minutes I've ever seen. Essentially, nothing really happens here, except we're just getting to know the characters who are conversing in a hotel lobby without the presence of conflict. You might call it an overly long exposition, but I enjoyed the pace of the film, because like the photography, the dialogue between the characters is very lifelike. After a sluggish pace, things pick up rather abruptly, as the bad guys starts shaking things up. As it turns out, several of the hotel guests are part of a vicious gang led by a the notorious mobster Rockom played by Edward G Robinson. I really enjoyed the fact that to compensate for Robinson being a little too small to be taken seriously on stage presence alone, there's a lot of hype about him before he actually appears on screen. Essentially, things turn into a hostage situation with Humphrey Bogart's army officer Frank McCloud as the group's best hope of saving the day. Reminiscent of 12 Angry Men or Hitchkock's Lifeboat, Key Largo is able to create tension and excitement within a very small space. The battle of wits between two highly-revered men, McCloud and Robinson, and the degree to which the film blows them both up, really adds a lot. There are also a number of scenes, which standing apart from the film, are very well-executed. For example, the arrival of a sheriff whose uninformed of the danger, really keeps us guessing, because we're not sure if anyone will confide anything to him, or even if they should. A lot of this is driven by Humphrey Bogart, whose natural ease translates into a guy who knows what he's doing. Bogart's character was literally never wrong in any move he made over the course of the movie. Looking back and pondering why this film didn't get more critical acclaim or make the AFI top 100 list, my guess is that there were just too many established Humphrey Bogart films on that list such as `Africa Queen', `Maltese Falcon', or `Casablanca.' Nevertheless, that's no excuse to overlook a movie like this

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