KEY LARGO.
Edward G Robinson & Humphrey Bogart,
Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor.
Dir: John Huston, 1948, Warner Bros.

SYNOPSIS:
Bogie, by now a megastar, plays the good guy to Robinson's measured coiled-cobra of Rocco, a mob boss on the run. There's some fine acting on show but a limp plot and a tired ending. The joys come from seeing the magnificent Robinson snarling, again, through his ruthless shark-toothed gangster act.

"The set was a pleasant place to be. Portraying Rocco's dame was Claire Trevor, Robinson's sidekick from the Big Town radio broadcasts. Lauren Bacall would have tea for the stars in her dressing room most days, where Robinson would delight the assembled with stories, often told with a thick Yiddish accent. Although Bogart was now a bigger star than Robinson, he made Robinson feel it was still the other way around, knocking on his dressing room door and calling the older man to the set each morning. That the film was from Warner Brothers, a lot that Robinson had not been near for more than five years, made the making of the picture all that more sweet emotionally."
- Alan Gansberg, E G Robinson biographer.

REVIEWS:
"It's a confidently directed, handsomely shot movie, and the cast go at it as if the nonsense about gangsters and human dignity were high drama."
- New Yorker.
"A completely empty, synthetic work."
- Gavin Lambert. (whoever he is?)
"Moody melodrama on similar lines to To Have and Have Not: it sums up the post-war mood of despair, allows several good acting performances, and builds up to a pretty good action climax."
- Leslie Halliwell.