Key Largo (1948)

Key Largo (1948), directed by John Huston.

A veteran arrives in the Florida Keys to meet the family of an old army buddy killed in the war. Their hotel is infested with unsavory gangsters who hold the others prisoner while waiting for a business contact to show. Something else is coming: a monster hurricane that terrifies the bad guys. Bullets won't stop it.

One of my favorites. I love what Bogart and Bacall have going here: both play against type. He's not a tough guy and she's not a femme fatale. They have nice married couple chemistry.

Edward G. Robinson is a bullfrog-looking gangster we love to hate. He's both funny and majestically nasty. Claire Trevor (last seen in Best of the Badmen (1951) and Stagecoach (1939)) is touching as his pathetic alcoholic girlfriend. Lionel Barrymore, gutsy but wheelchair-bound, prays for the storm to kill them all and we're rooting for him.

It's adapted from a play and remains a bit talky but that is objectionable only in one of Bogart speeches when he says "All I care about is me." Not being a tough guy is ok, but making speeches about it is playwright-speak. They use it in the story, though: "Your head says one thing but your life says another. Your head always loses."

He gets them all in the end.

Max Steiner score.