High Sierra

With exception of WHITE HEAT, this was the movie gangster's last stand. Bogart plays a graying criminal who's had it, and is in pursuit of one last caper in a changing world. He hooks up with Kennedy, Curtis, and informer Wilde to pull of the job, and becomes sympathetic to the plight of Curtis's moll Lupino, while also obsessing about young Leslie, a lame girl. HIGH SIERRA romanticizes the Bogie character as much as possible within hardbitten guidelines and, with the exception of the always overeager Leslie, it's acted within an inch of its classic life, especially by Bogie, Lupino and a mongrel dog in the gut-wrenching climax. And that fadeout... .

HIGH SIERR...