BEFORE: This is the movie I should have watched right after "Three Kings," since it also details the search for gold in a desert - just in Mexico, not the Iraq. A true classic that I know very little about...
THE PLOT: Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin, both down on their luck in Tampico, Mexico in 1925, meet up with a grizzled prospector named Howard and decide to join with him in search of gold in the wilds of central Mexico.
AFTER: Yeah, all I really knew about this film was the "We don't need no STEENKIN' badges!" line. We have a lot of fun with that at Comic-Con when they give us our badges for the event... But like a lot of famous movie + TV quotes, like "Beam me up, Scotty" - most people say the line wrong. The actual line in the film is "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"
Bogart is a lot more expressive here than usual - he actually displays some emotion when he gets cheated out of a week's pay from a contractor. Then later, after spending a lot of time in the desert, he goes a little loco, and it's more real acting than I've ever seen from him.
Fred Dobbs (Bogart) and Curtin (Tim Holt), down on their luck in Mexico, finally get some cash after shaking down the contractor who owes them, and they decide to roll the dice as prospectors, with the help of Howard, the old man they met at the flophouse (Walter Huston). Howard not only knows how to find gold, he also knows what greed can do to a man, and that's what the movie is really about.
Dobbs and Curtin say that they'll quit after a certain amount is mined, but once they reach that threshhold, of course they want to keep going. They also promise to never fight or argue over the gold - so guess what happens?
The situation gets more complicated when their campsite is found by another prospector, and then by some Mexican bandits (they claim to be Mexican federales, with no need of the aforementioned stinkin' badges...)
So they decide to pull up stakes and head to town to cash in, but in order to do that, they have to rise above their petty greed - the ultimate message appears to be that man is, in essence, incapable of doing so, and that this is Dobbs' undoing.
RATING: 7 out of 10 burros
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