Word: huston
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Asphalt Jungle. Director John Huston explores a band of criminals as human beings while documenting a $1,000,000 jewel burglary (TIME, June...
...Asphalt Jungle. Director John Huston explores a band of criminals as human beings while closely documenting a $1,000,000 burglary; with Sterling Hayden and Louis Calhern (TIME, June...
...Asphalt Jungle (MGM) is an ambitious attempt by Director John (Treasure of Sierra Madre) Huston to explore a gang of criminals as human beings, while telling the tense story of an intricately planned $1,000,000 jewel burglary. The two-hour result falls somewhat short of the attempt. But thanks to brilliant direction and skillful work by Co-Scripters Huston and Ben Maddow in adapting a W. R. Burnett novel, it comes close enough to make the film well worth seeing...
After that, though Huston's fine hand is almost constantly evident, the movie never builds up again to the same tension. With its criminals plainly doomed, it takes too long to resolve their fate in terms of their individual motivations and foibles...
Some moviegoers, sharing Huston's preoccupation with his characters, may applaud his decision to see them through at any cost. But the characters themselves, while uniformly well acted, are unevenly drawn. Some, e.g., the master criminal and the self-pitying bookie, are excellent. But the safecracker who worries about his sick child is pat and overworked, and the important character of the crooked lawyer is trite. And with the death of the hooligan in a Kentucky meadow, his head nuzzled by the horses he longed to see again, Huston gives a hard-bitten film a surprisingly mawkish ending...