How sad is this?

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

John Huston directs Bogart and company in this subdued comedy with the tagline "The bold adventure that beats them all". Well, it is not much of an adventure film and, in my opinion, it is not much of a comedy. Sure the bare bones of a comedy are there, but the stars of the film are not up to the challenge and the beautiful cinematography only serves to undermine the comic aspects of the film.The producers assembled a stellar veteran cast. Consider Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley and Peter Lorre for starters. But several of these stars, especially Bogart, lack the energy and spark that are needed to drive a great comedy. For example, the funniest bit of the film involves an auto accident with unforeseen results. Huston stages and edits the scene in a way that minimizes the comic payoff. It is still fun to see these actors performing together. Despite Bogart's own assessment of the film, it is still very watchable.Regardless, I think many viewers will question the casting of the two male characters who vie for the affections of Jones and Lollobrigida. Some might consider them too long in the tooth.Watch the film, but don't expect laugh out loud moments.

The fabled John Huston directs this Truman Capote screenplay. Billy Dannreuther(Humphrey) is part of a group of international crooks--Peterson(Robert Morely, Julius O'Hara(Peter Lorre) and Ravello(Marco Tulli) that are stranded in Italy trying to catch a steamer to Africa. Billy's wife Maria(Gina Lollobrigida),starving for romance, is a bit uneasy when her husband meets Gwendolen Chelm(Jennifer Jones), the feminine half of a British couple waiting for the same steamer being repaired. Counting Mr.Chelm(Edward Underdown), there are now seven people ready to set sail to Africa, all conjuring a scheme to beat each other to lay claim on land that is rich in uranium.BEAT THE DEVIL didn't start out well with critics and viewers, but looking back some think this black comedy to be the epitome of a 1950's spy-spoof. For some strange reason, my favorite sequence is the evacuation of the sinking boat. Why didn't Miss Lollobrigida get more screen time? Bogart was effortless.Other players: Bernard Lee, Saro Urzi, Ivor Bernard and Mario Perrone.

This is the kind of film made by a film director of solid reputation like John Huston when they want to hang out with the rest of the guys in the Hollywood-hood and spend their off hours partying in exotic locations. Huston and Truman Capote ultimately tinkered with the screenplay together, a pair of self-indulgent jokesters, and however inspired, their efforts put together an offbeat little gem with a storyline that entertains at every complicated plot twist. It's a wacky story about a group of con artists each to a one demonstrating various levels of cunning and idiocy. Meeting up together in the scenic isolation of some southern Italian port town, they're all obsessed with getting to some unnamed country in British East Africa where they plan to grab for themselves a monopoly in uranium deposits. This crew consists of Billy Dannreuther and his wife Maria played by Humphrey Bogart and Gina Lollabrigida. Dannreuther is the seasoned soldier of fortune type, a wanderer of the world always looking for ways to make a million. Bogart, a consummate professional, would never put in a lazy performance but here he shows little enthusiasm and just looks weary and impatient. This, however, actually serves well for the character, Dannreuther being a man who's seen it all and takes nothing for granted. His Italian wife all bosoms, curves and pouty lips is an Anglophile obsessed with all things English from tea in the afternoon to a hunger for the rolling lawns of titled English estates. The couple are in uneasy league with a quartet of ne'er-do-wells, the key members being Peterson, played by Robert Morley, Ivor Barnard as Major Jack Ross, a loony homicidal fascist who believes Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, and Peter Lorre as Julius O'Hara. O'Hara, so obviously a brand of O'Hara that Ireland never saw, pridefully expresses that O'Hara is a very respectable surname in Chile. He counteracts Dannreuther's frustration with the complications of their scheme by emphasizing what every con man needs to keep in the forefront: "To seem trustworthy is no more important than to be trustworthy." Time has not been kind to Peter Lorre who only age 49 in this movie looks significantly older since his appearance in Huston's 1941 "The Maltese Falcon" twelve years previous. We get a blonde Jennifer Jones of all things, apparently an effort to give her the vibes of the blonde noir babe practiced at duplicity. She's Gwendolen Chelm married to a stock-character British male, a member of the prissy, tight-laced breed, humorless and outwardly dull-witted. Chelm breaks into crisis mode when he finds he didn't pack his hot water bottle. The group of disreputables are waylaid on some North African shoreline after their African bound boat sinks, and taken in for interrogation and detention by horseback marauding Arabs and their leader. These turn out to be not a tribe of terrorists in the modern sense but terrifyingly stupid and intimidating. After Gwendolen rambles on in protest over their detainment, the chief of this band simply points out that "In my country a female may at least know her words are not heard." He may not care what a woman has to say but he certainly is interested in what they look like. It turns out he suffers from a swooning obsession with actress Rita Hayworth, his dream girl whom he'd like to add to is harem. Whichever one of this crew scores the riches at the end of the game doesn't really matter. It's a winner for the viewer.

This is cinematic hamburger set forth as steak. With its pedigree, this film should be much more substantial than it actually is. A flop in its day, the piece has found mouth-watering flavor among modern critics. But save for a few inspired moments, it doesn't seem like it's all the way done. The most interesting part is when Robert Morley and Humphrey Bogart watch their car plunge into the ocean, which may be a rather apt metaphor for the film plummeting at the box office. Next, the near murder of Jennifer Jones' husband on the ship makes no sense. But the film does pick up speed when they all land on shore and are facing a firing squad, but even that leads to a dull payoff, simply by allowing Morley's character to write a check and thus they are free? Why doesn't Morley offer a check in the beginning? Probably some scenes have been edited out where Bogart's character runs off. All too sudden, he is chummy with the government official. And the ending of the film, where we learn Jones' husband has made it to the plantation seems as if screenwriter Truman Capote and director John Huston have run out of inspiration or money to continue and finish it. I guess there could be a sequel, but what would be the point? Check please...