It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

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.

Notorious bank robber Roy "Mad Dog" Earle (Humphrey Bogart) is released from prison and is asked by an old friend to help with a robbery. But Earle's not happy with the gang he's given or the woman (Ida Lupino) they've brought along. As they plan the robbery and wait, Earle makes friends with a poor family and takes an interest in their handicapped daughter (a very pretty Joan Leslie).Classic gangster picture from Warner Bros. and one of Bogart's best. This is the movie that convinced WB Bogie could be a bankable star. Later that same year he would star in The Maltese Falcon and the rest is movie history. Bogart is excellent, of course, as is Ida Lupino in one of her better roles. Nice support from Barton MacLane, Arthur Kennedy, Henry Hull, Cornel Wilde, Donald MacBride, and Henry Travers. Great direction, excellent location shooting. Climactic shootout between Earle and the cops is terrific. Essential for fans of WB gangster flicks.

I was always interested to see the film that made the leading character actor of Casablanca and The African Queen a star, and it seems it was this one that I found listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, from writer John Huston (The Man Who Would Be King). Basically Roy 'Mad Dog' Earle (Humphrey Bogart) has just been pardoned and released from an eastern prison, but the experienced bank robber is wanted by aged gangster Big Mac (Donald MacBride) to lead and take charge of a California resort casino heist. He starts by driving across the country, meeting the three men that will assist him in the heist at a camp in the mountains, they are resort worker Louis Mendoza (Cornel Wilde), and camp residents 'Red' (Arthur Kennedy), and they are also joined by young woman Marie (Ida Lupino), who after argument is eventually allowed to stay. Marie falls in love with Roy, but he does show any of the same feelings, he instead has affection for young woman Velma (Joan Leslie) who he pays to have an operation on her deformed foot, but she refuses a marriage proposal because she is seeing someone else, so when her fiancé shows up he does turn to Marie and they become lovers. All the plans for the robbery are made and they go ahead with the heist, but they are interrupted by a security guard and it goes wrong, the three assistants ends up in a car accident, Red and Babe are killed, and the police interrogate Mendoza. The police put a search out for 'Mad Dog' for the public to identify and catch him, Roy and Marie leave town together, but they separate so she can get away, and he hides in the Sierra Mountains. It is sunrise when the police catch up to Roy, and he tries to shoot the officers below, and it is when he hears Marie calling for him that they get the chance to shoot him, and they do and he falls to his death, while she sobs and is driven away. Also starring Henry Hull as 'Doc' Banton, It's a Wonderful Life's Henry Travers as Pa and Elisabeth Risdon as Ma. Bogart is usually the charming good guy, here he is a likable criminal, I can see reasons why he became more popular following this film, the film itself does have a bit of cheesy feel and corny story, there could have been a bit more heist action, but it is I suppose paced alright and a not bad crime thriller. Worth watching!

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.