Amazon.com Essentials:
Still the tightest, sharpest, and most cynical of Hollywood's
official deathless classics, bracingly tough even by post-Tarantino
standards. Humphrey Bogart is Dashiell Hammett's definitive private
eye, Sam Spade, struggling to keep his hard-boiled cool as the
double-crosses pile up around his ankles. The plot, which dances all
around the stolen Middle Eastern statuette of the title, is too
baroque to try to follow, and it doesn't make a bit of difference. The
dialogue, much of it lifted straight from Hammett, is delivered with
whip-crack speed and sneering ferocity, as Bogie faces off against
Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, fends off the duplicitous advances
of Mary Astor, and roughs up a cringing "gunsel" played by Elisha Cook
Jr. It's an action movie of sorts, at least by implication: the
characters always seem keyed up, right on the verge of erupting into
violence. This is a turning-point picture in several respects: John
Huston (The African
Queen) made his directorial debut here in 1941, and Bogart,
who had mostly played bad guys, was a last-minute substitution for
George Raft, who must have been kicking himself for years
afterward. This is the role that made Bogart a star and established
his trend-setting (and still influential) antihero persona.
--David Chute
