The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948)

The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948)

7/10

Starring

Humphrey Bogart

Walter Huston

Tim Holt

Bruce Bennett

Directed by John Huston

This was a better outing by John Houston. I so much prefer this movie to his 1941’s The Maltese Falcon. Huston has done many great movies with many tagged as classics and this one is just as well deserving of the term classic.

What I liked about this movie is the irony which Howard (a character played by John Huston’s father Walter Huston) sees in it. It was like they went three-sixty and landed where they started, but this time two of them now have a better idea of how they would take their lives from now on.

What makes this movie fantastic is when you have not read the book the movie is based on. John Huston wrote the screenplay and directed the movie based on a 1935 book of the same name by B. Traven.

The movie plot can be summarized in a sentence, You should never say never and money brings out the worst in us. Which basically was there from the start, is just that money brings it out to the open.

We get to meet Dobbs (Humphery Bogart), living in 1925 Mexico trying to get any job for some money to get by. Down on his luck, he begs for money. He runs into another American Curtin (Tim Holt) and they two talk about how hard things have been for them. A Con Man hires them to work on a site for him and when they are done he refuses to pay them, running away from them.

The time it takes to get to the above point in the movie may make you think the above is a spoiler, but it is not.

                                     

They used their last cash to get a decent bed at what can best be described as a flophouse. There an old man named Howard is telling tales of gold. Dobbs gets interested, but does not have the money to fund the expedition.

The next day the lucky two ran into the man who ran out without paying them for their job. They track him down and were able to get paid. They used that money and others that Dobbs got luckily to get on a train and go gold dust searching.

Their train was attacked by bandits, who will later have significant roles in the remainder of the movie.

The trio got lucky, but the time they spent together gathering all these gold dust, did not do anything good for their minds and it is those crazy behaviors that this movie is about.

Fun, captivating and interesting. I recommend this movie to any one who wants to see a good movie take turns on them and leave them wondering how things got so lost.