Review – The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

This is one of the all-time best cinematic explorations of greed gone bad. Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston and Tim Holt play three guys who journey into the Mexican wilderness in search of gold. The men are more archetypes than actual characters: the sassy old prospector who knows everything about the business (Huston), the average Joe who just wants to make enough money to go back to the States and start a peach orchard (Holt), and the paranoid rat who’s going to mess everything up for everyone (Bogart). I’m sure if they remade this it would be dreadful, but somehow this turns out to be a wonderful combination of acting, script and technical quality. The “we don’t need no steenkin’ badges” thing is also one of the most famous misquoted lines in movie history. Worth seeing