The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a John Huston directed film starring Humphrey Bogart. These two each became quite famous after The Maltese Falcon and while this is nowhere near as good, it's still good and earned them both even more fame. The two would also team up for Key Largo and The African Queen but saying anymore about this is irrelevant for the purpose of this review.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre opens in a city in Mexico. Humphrey Bogart's character and his friend are basically American bums in Mexico looking for work. They meet a guy played by Walter Huston (director John Huston's father) who talks about gold. They decide to go look for gold. While this section here only takes up about 25 minutes, almost every complaint I have with the film is here. Most of the dialogue in these sections is incredibly over-simplified. One character says they should do something and another replies with a rather boring "okay, let's go" or something to that effect. Worse still, in order to go searching for gold they need money. They got some money from a job but are a little short. Luckily at the exact moment they realize they're 200 dollars short. Luckily, at that exact moment Bogart's character finds out he won the lottery (he bought a lottery ticket early on in the film) and wins exactly 200 Pesos (apparently Pesos correlate to dollars exactly for the purposes of this film). Winning the lottery is highly improbable and the timing is even worse.

Once the movie gets going everything else is pretty good. As a precious metal aficionado, I enjoyed just about everything gold-related. While this movie is considered a western by many prominent sources, I'm not sure if I would count it as one. This doesn't really matter, as how good a movie is does not depend on whether it's a western, but I thought I'd point this out anyways.

As previously mentioned, the film stars Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston. The other notable character in this film is played by Tim Holt. Tim Holt does a decent job, but his character is not all that memorable. Humphrey Bogart delivers perhaps the finest acting of his career in this film playing a guy who starts out as the usual Bogart tough guy who becomes more and more insane as the film goes along. Walter Huston also does a good job and wins himself an Oscar for best supporting actor. In previous review I am often critical of best supporting actor/actress selections as they seem to have insignificant roles, but I am not critical of their selection. Walter Huston personifies what I expect from a good supporting actor - he doesn't have the most screen time and he's not the most important character in the film, but he's on screen rather often and plays a pivotal character to develop the story. The film is also notable for some brief cameos by Robert Blake as a young lottery vendor, Tim Holt's father, and Ann Sheridan. None of them have much importance in the film, but they're worth pointing out.

This film also contains a rather famous movie quote. When some Mexican bandits try and rob the would-be gold miners of their guns they pretend to be sheriffs. Bogart asks them for their badges and the reply is said to be the 36th most memorable movie quote of all-time by the American Film Institute:
"Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!"

While this film starts out a little slow and not that great, it quickly becomes a very good film. Once the early problems are forgotten this film borders on being an outstanding film. Unfortunately, there is one final complaint that must be made - late in the film a character is shot twice from point blank and survives. While it is theoretically possible that such a thing could happen, I have a hard time believing that someone could shoot another person from a couple feet away twice and not kill them. Also, a minor concern is the fact that there are significant portions of this film that are in Spanish. This wasn't really an annoyance to me as Mexicans in Mexico generally speak Spanish and I am capable of speaking Spanish, but it may bother those who don't. It is worth noting that most scenes in Spanish are later translated by someone listening to them, are self explanatory, or are unimportant. Ignoring the flaws, this is still an enjoyable experience.

85/100
B

UP NEXT: Henry Fonda in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man

As for that famous movie quote, it turns out it was ripped off from the novel from which this book was based on. The film version is slightly different as the censors would never go for the original version:

WARNING: Contains profanity...mostly in Spanish

Spoiler: