Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49437 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-30
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.20 pounds
• Running time: 126 minutes

Customer Reviews

Classic Bogart. Terrific Film
A classic film of ambition turning to greed and mistrust ending in paranoia and insanity.

This is a classic Bogart film with terrific performances all round.

The subject of the film is "there's gold in them their hills" - the so called treasure in the Sierra Madre mountain range.

John Huston (who also directed Bogart in "The African Queen") directs his own dad (Walter Huston) who plays the Wiley old prospector who just knows he's going to strike gold. He leads a 'down at heel' Bogart, and (relatively unknown) Tim Holt into the mountains where the fun really starts.

After months of hard gruelling work mining the gold, their task is then to retain it.

A dark, (quite literally) gritty tale of greed with one of the best performances of insanity every seen in the cinema.

Bogart is just blinding !!

Good adventure film. But a classic?
This movie comes with a tall reputation, often featuring in 'best film' lists. But it's quite hard to see why.

The fact that it doesn't fit easily into any one genre category is no problem - lots of the best films don't - viz. Notorious, Run Lola Run, Cache. It's probably best seen as an adventure psycho-drama with a western feel to it. There is little new about a story of three American men down on their luck in a familiar but foreign country (Mexico) prospecting for gold. The concentration by director John Huston on character is, however, interesting and constant, and the way in which greed takes over the men and changes them in different ways is well paced. Also welcome is the extent to which the film was shot on location north of Mexico City - there's a real feel of blood, sweat and toil to the proceedings.

But all this is hardly enough to add up to an outstanding picture. The theme of a failed quest fuelled by ambition and covetousness is played out by a trio with only intermittent support by other players (some of whom are the usual tiresomely leering bandits) and so lacks the resonance that linked sub-plots might have supplied.

Humphrey Bogart is much praised for his work here, but I thought he was the least effective of the trio, and even miscast. Bogie is surely a creature of smokey rooms filled with whisky bottles and shady deals; he always to me looks ill at ease in the open air, like a moth craving the darkness. The transition from eager prospector to paranoid searcher is not subtly done, to my mind. Tim Holt as the younger prospector is very good, but Walter Huston as the old man walks off with the acting honours. He conveys perfectly the fast talking, experienced and philosphical traits of his character, and in him naked greed is turned into natural ambition.

Recommended, but let's say 9 carat rather than 24 carat gold.

Not what I was expecting. In a good way.
The story of an American in Mexico who is down on his luck. He eventually teams up with some other Americans in the same boat to go prospecting. Then the trouble starts - Indians, Bandits, Federales and each other.

The old man reminded me of my dad. But I didn't take any stars off for that.