High Sierra

1941 movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Roy "Don't Call Me Mad Dog" Earle is pardoned from prison. An old dying friend, the friend who helped him get released, needs him to help with the robbery of a hotel. He drives west to meet the pair of amateurs and the woman who will be working with him. Along the way, he meets some old people and their club-footed grand-daughter, and he becomes enamoured with the young girl. Things don't go as planned.

High Sierra needed to dive a bit deeper. There are depths that are approached or at least are approachable, but the filmmakers never quite get there. It's like a kid who dog-paddles around in the shallow end of the pool while continually peeking over at the big kids jumping off the diving board into the deep end. Maybe he even tiptoes over to where he can just barely keep his head above water, but then he hurries back. Bogart's character was stockish when he should have had some real emotional depth and layers. The pair of romances comes across as silly and naive instead of painting the picture of a man who desperately wants to be loved and settle down into something that resembles an honest life. There's a lot of build-up to the heist scene, and when it happens, it's one of those "That's it?" lame situations. Nothing happens that would require any heist expertise, and then it's filmed in such a static style, that it's nowhere near the climactic point it should be. And there's something about watching Bogart cuddle with a dog that is just wrong. This also contains what may be the worst bit of acting in Bogart's career--a scene in which he is having some kind of nightmare and sleeptalks. Seems like director Raoul Walsh should have yelled, "Cut! Alright, let's try that again without all the unnatural twitching." This isn't a terrible movie--Bogart's got some cool moments, the girls are pretty, the story's ok--but it should have been so much better.