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Dancing_P [ 6.5 ]
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I guess it's not fair to judge a movie on what I expected it to be; High Sierra greatly disappointed me because I expected a typical Bogart movie where he punches dudes and seduces dames and smokes a lot and is badass. It's not, really; it's a melodrama with dog reaction shots, a painful racist handyman caricature and Bogart falling in love with a plucky young gal with a club foot and a whole lot of concern over the surgery of said club foot. Those seeking whiskey-sipping Marlowe hijinx (me) need not apply. It's still relatively interesting thanks to a rock-solid, atypical performance by Bogart and decent direction by Raoul Walsh.
Bogart plays an aging gangster named Roy Earle just recently released from prison who hooks up with a couple of thugs (Arthur Kennedy and Alan Curtis) to pull one last heist. Earle isn't as young as he used to be and he intends this to be enough to cover his costs for living a life of quiet calm. Somewhere along the line he befriends a family of wannabe Joads (led by the always dependable Henry Travers) who are travelling to get their granddaughter (Joan Leslie) treatment for her club foot. Roy falls in love with her, which pisses off the female member of his crew (Ida Lupino) who has fallen for Roy herself despite the fact that he treats her like shit and is in love with an underage farmer (or something).
Suffice to say, there isn't a lot of sleuthing or punching or anything in here; it's a classic melodrama complete with unrequited love and tragic ending, not a bad thing until you consider that Walsh peppers the film with so many useless extraneous bits of fluff that the central love story never really takes hold. It's redeemed by Bogart giving a seldom-reproduced performance as a tired, reluctant yet violent man who seems to be unable to escape the expected. Lupino is also strong, although her entire character and raison d'être are not exactly put in the best light. It's a Bogart vehicle (or not; Lupino is actually top-billed) that seems to do everything in its power to avoid putting Bogart in the spotlight. The final shootout scene is a minor classic of 40's action filmmaking, well put together by Walsh, but it doesn't redeem a) dog reaction shots b) the caricature shuck-n-jive of the handyman character c) the disturbingly large percentage of the film spent discussing the best way to get rid of a club foot.
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jeff_v [ 8.0 ]
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Raoul Walsh, one of the great unheralded directors of the studio heydey, delivers a mournful elegy for the gangster cycle (he'd later top it with the incandescent White Heat). He generates a great deal of sympathy for the lifelong criminal played by Humphrey Bogart, and the final shoot-out on Mt. Whitney has all the cataclysmic feeling of Greek tragedy.
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| Weighted Rating | : 7.1 |
| No. Ratings | : 4 | |
| No. Reviews | : 2 | |
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