Key Largo

DVD review from The Movie Snob

Key Largo (C). I continued to work my way through the four-DVD set "Bogie & Bacall: The Signature Collection" with this 1948 release. I was prepared to love it because I am so fond of the awesome 80's tune it inspired. Alas, it is a pretty mediocre piece of entertainment. Humphrey Bogart (To Have and Have Not) plays a soldier back from WWII who's at loose ends and makes his way down to the Florida Keys to visit the father of a war buddy who got killed. He meets the father (Lionel Barrymore, Grand Hotel) and also the widow (Lauren Bacall, To Have and Have Not) at the hotel they run. But the hotel is shortly taken over by a bunch of gangsters led by Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson, Illegal), and Bogie will have to use all his street smarts to help the good guys survive the night. Oh, and there's a hurricane coming. The whole thing reminded me of Rawhide, which I reviewed in this space a while back. Anyhoo, nothing special about this one, even though Claire Trevor (Stagecoach) won a supporting-actress Oscar for it.