Key Largo

A little windy and rhetorical for my taste, but still one of John Huston's best efforts.

Perfeclty tense atmosphere and performances, with the sparks flying between Bogart and Bacall.

Emphasis is on tension in the telling, and effective use of melodramatic mood has been used to point up the suspense.

Like the similarly sweaty, claustrophobic 12 Angry Men, Key Largo is a rare adaptation of a stage play in which the physical constraints of the stagebound source material are a strength rather than a weakness.

Although the characters are basically stereotypes, they are lent the gift of life by a superlative cast.

The script prepared by Mr. Huston and Richard Brooks was too full of words and highly cross-purposed implications to give the action full chance.

Key Largo manages to keep audiences on their toes or at the edge of their seat from start to finish.

Loosely based on Maxwell Anderson’s 1939 play, “Key Largo” took the form of a brilliant crime drama anchored by a great cast and superb performances.

The real stars of the film are mind games and manipulation, sharply brought to life by the restrained verbal feuding between Bogart and Robinson.

Key Largo (1948) is one of the more entertaining crime-gangster melodramas from Warner Bros. The intelligent, exciting, theatrical, but moody, downbeat crime drama-thriller (and melodramatic film noir)...