At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

A melancholic drama with elements of a gangster heist film. If you're looking for a procedural heist flick like CRISS CROSS, forget about this movie. This is a character study of ageing gangster mad dog roy earle (bogart) and an account of his life after he is released from jail. roy wants to settle down in an Indiana farm. There are even two girls vying for his attention. All he has to do is make one last heist, which he owes to his old boss. A rather schmaltzy sub plot about a handicapped girl takes something out of the film. It was not the best way to show roy's bourgeoisie aspirations. I dont think the makers realized the film's full potential. But the relationship between roy and the marie (ida lupino), the damsel in distress is one of the film's highlights.Ida Lupino is not the most beautiful actress of the 1940s and 50s. But she is that special woman who most men end up longing for if she were in a room full of beautiful bimbos. There is something very bewitching about her. This must be one of Bogart's best performances as mad dog earle, tough on the outside, but inside he longs for a normal life on a farm.I liked the grand vistas which was the backdrop for the final car chase.(7.5/10)

It may be difficult to believe now, but there was once a time when Hollywood icon Humphrey Bogart played second-fiddle to a bigger star, usually lumped with the role of deadbeat gangster or short-fused psychopath. In movies like Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties and this, High Sierra, he find-tuned himself into the fast-talking leading man he would later become in the likes of The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. With High Sierra, his name appeared below that of the magnificent Ida Lupino, but the film starts and ends with Bogart, and he appears in near enough every scene. He plays Roy 'Mad Dog' Earle, a career criminal freshly sprung from prison who soon realises that his generation of the respectable, honourable gangster is quickly dying out.After serving eight years for armed robbery, Roy receives a governor's pardon arranged by his old boss Big Mac (Donald MacBride). He is to use his experience and expertise to oversee a heist of a swanky new Californian resort hotel, and heads into the country to hook up with his new crew. On his way into the mountains, Roy meets the young and pretty Velma (Joan Leslie), and decides to use the money stolen from the hotel to pay for an operation to correct her clubfoot, and win her affections in the process. Only his new team-mates Red (Arthur Kennedy) and Babe (Alan Curtis) are young, brash and green, and inside man Mendoza (Cornel Wilde) can't be trusted to keep his mouth shut. The only saving grace is Babe's sort-of girlfriend Marie (Lupino), who seems to be the only one of Roy's new rag-tag gang of thieves who can be trusted. She falls in love with the old-school Roy, and after the robbery naturally goes wrong when somebody gets shot, the two must flee into the hills and live as fugitives.Director Raoul Walsh, working with a script by John Huston and W.R. Burnett, seems to have believed that both the gangster and the gangster movie were slowly dying out back in 1941. This isn't true of course, as gangster films are just as popular today as they have ever been, but this air of melancholy helps distinguish High Sierra from the countless other genre pictures of the era. Lupino and Bogart are both superb as the damaged, lonely criminals. Roy has his heart set on the younger Velma, who represents everything he isn't and never will be, while failing to realise that Marie may actually be the woman he's looking for. Only Marie is just as broken as Roy, and the ageing gangster is looking to make a clean break and a fresh start. When the subjects of gangster movies and film noir crop up, High Sierra doesn't tend to get mentioned much, but it's a terrific and often gripping crime drama, with an engrossing romance at its very core.

This film shows Humphrey Bogart's incredible versatility and natural talent.The story and his acting as a gangster are so believable and Ida Lupino was a perfect match. Her performance was so great that in my mind she is forever typecast in the role.How many times can you say you enjoyed every minute of a movie? I'd put a small handful in that category, all of which star Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne.This one is even available in digital HD! Thanks Warner Brothers - score huge!

I believe a serious study should be made about how deceiving this film is.we're meant to root for a bank robber even as he plans one last heist, in the process lamenting the film noir crook, while no reason is given why we should.nostalgia for older, simpler times, presumably when his type could freely roam the open prairie, on the other hand no one forces his type to hold-up banks.there is a crippled young girl that Roy helps out, a very decent farm girl, only to turn bitchy and petulant when her leg is fine, and of course suddenly there is a loving boyfriend who wants to pay back Roy for the medical costs, if so why didn't he take care of that all this time?a heroic last stand against police and the modern world, high up in the stark Sierras, on the other hand a cop is shot in passing and no one thinks twice about it.The problem here, as you may have gleaned, is not the amoral world, that is fine and expected from noir, even though the film comes at the start of the cycle when there wasn't any solid genre as we know it now. I'm sure the film was conceived as a gritty crime flick, typical Warner bros, the twist being that it will be told using codas from the western. The innovation is that those codas are about the passing of the West, something the western was not going to pick up until the late 50's at least.The problem is the tear-jerking sentimentality applied on noir cosmology; small human beings at the mercy of cruel gods, this is rendered as Roy being sprung from prison, given a new lease of life, but only to serve the heist.Now traditional western heroes had a mean streak in them but were basically decent human beings, so if the film rhapsodized their passing, that was okay, they were the kind of man you'd like to be or call a friend. Later in Italian westerns they were amoral scoundrels who maybe did the right thing because it was on their way to money, but Italian westerns were never sentimental about their exploits.But you can't be emotional about the noir schmuck, you can't arrive at conclusions for us. My opinion is that one has to push his understanding beyond the level of fates, beyond immediate chaos on the human level, that some of us are born bad and only rushing towards death, and grasp mechanisms that control these things. The film grasps little.On the other hand, you might want to see the classic finale, with our hero surrounded by landscape that reflects him, harsh, barren, proud, while down below watches the audience, of course expecting violence and tragedy.