I had read how well-regarded this film is and looked forward to watching it. I was surprised to find I was quite underwhelmed. It's not a terrible film by any means but I didn't think it was anything special. I can't even articulate why I felt like that- it just lacked a certain intangible something for me.
Broke drifter Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) joins up with fellow drifter Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) and grizzled old prospector Howard (Walter Huston) to search for gold in Mexico. They soon uncover a small fortune but Dobbs begins to distrust his colleagues.
This is a film all about greed. Dobbs treats Howard and especially Curtin quite well at the start of the film but he gradually becomes more and more obsessed about retaining his wealth and loses the ability to trust. It has a sort of 'Lord of the Flies' feel to it with a similar theme of isolated people losing their humanity.
There's some decent performances here with Bogart great as Dobbs, using his rogueish charm to make him likable at the start and then gradually delivering a man who becomes more and more unpleasant. Walter Huston, the father of director John Huston, also gives a superb performance as the old prospector Howard. John considered it the best acting performance in any of his films, though he may have been a little biased, and Walter won Best Supporting Actor at the 1949 Oscars (Bogart, controversially, did not receive a nomination).
The film could have had far more edge to it were it not for the Hayes Production Code. There's a death scene which could have really been something that was heavily edited and the language throughout the film is toned down. I'd have loved to see the version of Dobbs that would have existed had it not been for the Production Code. The other element that dates it is the way that non-white races are depicted in the film- it's better than some contemporaries but very poor by today's standards.
A well-made film with some cracking performances that for some reason didn't quite do it for me.
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