Plot summary (with spoilers): Ol' Fred Dobbs lives in some crappy town in Mexico in the 1920's, is homeless, and begs American tourists for change. He finally gets an offer from an American contractor to work on an island off the coast for eight dollars a day for the next few weeks. Dobbs agrees to go, having no problem stealing Mexican's job. While on the job, he meets Bob Curtin, a fellow American who is also in deep southern Mexico for no stated reason, and also broke. But their boss turns out to be a cheat, and when they get back into town, the boss pretends to go get the money, and skips out on them instead. A few days later, Curtin and Dobbs run into him at a bar and proceed to beat him up in an unconvincingly blocked sequence that leads to the guy giving them two hundred bucks each.
So they drink it up, and run into an old prospector named Howard, who tells them what will happen in the rest of this movie, I mean, tells them his past stories as a gold prospector. He says that he's gone prospecting many times, and every single time he's fought with his partners, and either he or his partners have gotten greedy and paranoid, and every time he's lost all of his winnings because he was robbed by his partners or Mexican banditos, or he spent all his winnings trying to earn more winnings. Curtin and Dobbs decide they want to take their 400 and invest in gold digging, and ask Howard to join them. He immediately agrees. Heh.
So they go hiking through the Sierra Madre, up the mountain and around and around and Curtin and Dobbs are beat and just when they want to quit and go back home, Howard says they've found gold!
So they set up all their prospecting doo-dahs and get to work. After a short time, they've amassed a few hundred dollars each, with plenty more out there. They decide to split the gold three ways, and each keep track of their own gold, hiding it from the other two. This leads to fun things like Dobbs freaking out when Curtin gets up in the middle of the night to pee, which causes Dobbs to run off to see where he went, which causes Curtin to get back and wonder where Dobbs is, and run off himself. Howard, who's seen it all and now too old for this shit, just shakes his head and goes back to sleep.
Eventually, Curtin goes into town for more supplies, as Dobbs refuses to leave his gold up in the mountains unattended or risk getting robbed by banditos if he brings it along. While in town, Curtin meets a Texan named Jack Colby, who sees Curtin's burros and supplies, and figures out he's a prospector, despite Curtin's claims to be a hunter. He follows Curtin all the way back to the camp, about a mile or so behind him. When he shows up, all three men are surly and angry at him, and tell him to get lost. Colby says he knows they're prospectors and he wants in. He gives them three options: 1) They can kill him right now, (personally, I would've buried that option in the middle) in which case whoever does the killing will be forever beholden to the other two's silence 2) They can send him away, in which case he'll blab to everybody back in town and there will be 50 more people like him here in a week or 3) They can let him join their group and split any additional profits four ways.
Dobbs, Curtin, and Howard want a moment to discuss it. They walk away from Colby, then decide to all kill him at once, eliminating any problems inherent in option 1. But when they approach Colby to let him know their decision, and also to kill him, Colby points out that banditos are riding up the hill towards them right now. They all hide and prepare for an ambush. The head bandito, nicknamed "Gold Hat", likely on account of his gold hat, spots Dobbs and tells him that he and his men are federales and that Dobbs is under arrest. Dobbs wants to see some badges, but Gold Hat says that they don't need no stinking badges. Wow, that's where that's from? Cool.
So there's a gun fight, and the guys manage to fight off the banditos, and Gold Hat bids a hasty retreat. It's then that they discover that Colby has died in the firefight, which I guess was Option 4. They go through his stuff, and discover a rather heartbreaking letter from his wife, begging him to quit the gold rush business, and to just come home already and stop trying to strike it rich and be a husband and father instead.
So our trio buries Colby, and then goes back to work. After they've amassed about 35,000 dollars each, which I think is over 200 million in today's money, the mountain is officially out of gold, so they decide to pack up their things and leave. Dobbs has grown increasingly paranoid and distrustful of the other two. On their way back, they encounter a local Indian tribe, who plead in Spanish for help. Howard explains to the other two that they have a child in a coma and are begging for help to save his life. Howard goes with the Indians because if it's one thing he knows besides prospecting, it's bringing children out of comas.
And indeed, the kid's lying on a blanket or some shit in the forest and Howard literally raises the boy's arms up and down a few times and then rubs some oil or something on his chest and belly, and the kid wakes up. I had no idea technology was so advanced in the 1800's. Or so laughably arbitrary.
So the Indians want to thank Howard by making him the C3PO of their tribe and have a celebration for a few days. Howard says no thanks, but they insist with spears pointed. Dobbs says tough luck Howard buddy, we'll meet you back in town in a week. He and Curtain take off.
After just a night of dragging along Howard's burro, Dobbs tells Curtin that they should run out on Howard and take his gold. Curtin says no way, but then Dobbs accuses him of trying to take all the gold, and pulls a gun on him. They fight a bit, and then Dobbs winds up shooting Curtin and running off.
Curtin's not dead though, and he crawls his way back to the Indians and finds Howard. Howard patches up Curtin's gun wound by...I'm gonna say...doing the hokey pokey, but Curtin still needs a few days to heal and Howard's not yet allowed to leave anyway.
Back to Dobbs. He's dehydrated, desperately staggering along, trying to wrangle three burros and all the gold they're carrying. He stumbles upon a muddy hole filled with dirty water and literally fights the burros to stick his head in first and start gulping it down. As he drinks, he sees a pair of boots in front of him. He looks up to see Gold Hat, grinning crazily. Gold Hat and his gang of banditos wants to know why Dobbs is out here all alone. Dobbs says his friends are just behind him on horseback, with guns and stuff. But Gold Hat doesn't buy it. He wants to know what's on the burros. Dobbs says pelts. (Indeed, there are animal pelts covering the gold bags). But unfortunately for Dobbs, pelts and burros are also worth killing for, and indeed the banditos shoot Dobbs dead. They ride into town, and discover the gold bags underneath the pelts and mistake them for sand and cut them lose. They try to sell the burros in town, but the burros are marked on their hides, and the buyer realizes they're his own burros and has Gold Hat and his men arrested and immediately executed by firing squad.
Finally, Howard and Curtin show up in town. The owner of the burros tells them what happened, and says their stuff is safely locked up, but when Howard and Curtin go through it, they discover the gold is gone. A random Mexican kid pipes up and says he extremely conveniently saw the banditos cutting bags of sand lose just outside of town, and Howard and Curtin ride off. But suddenly the wind picks up and the gold is blown all over, back into the land from whence it came. Howard discovers the now empty bags blowing in the wind and shows them to Curtin. They both stare sadly for a moment, then Howard throws his head back and starts laughing maniacally, and soon Curtin joins in, laughing the laugh of the damned. Howard says oh well, he'll just go back to the Indian tribe and continue to be worshiped as a god, because of that one time he raised a boy's arms up and down. Curtin says he'll find Colby's widow, tell her what happened, and try to make amends somehow. (It's unspoken, but I'm assuming said 'amends' will include fucking. Provided he doesn't include in the conversation, "we were totally going to murder your husband, but the banditos beat us to it).
As the two men ride off in the sunset, the camera pans down to reveal one last bag of gold, still full.
Review: Lots of fun! Great suspense, lots of action. From what little I knew of Humphrey Bogart, I was surprised that he played the scuzzy villain in the movie. And not even a fun "love to hate" villain, but just a crazy asshole who even dies some twenty minutes or so before the end. I liked that when Dobbs thinks he's killed Curtin, he justifies it to himself by saying he has to look out for himself in this world, which is something you could imagine the swindler boss saying in the beginning of this movie. Nobody ever sees themselves as the villain. This movie has basically like a stealthy, extremely cynical version of one of my favs, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, which is something I didn't realize until about halfway through and the shit started to hit the fan.
I guess the basic message of the movie "greed is bad" is pretty simplistic and the movie ultimately doesn't have much to say, but the way the message was delivered was quite suspenseful and unpredictable, with plenty of great dialogue. I think I like this "John Huston" director-guy.
Stars: Four out of five.
Next, "The Best Years of Our Lives", and then the unwieldy titles continue with "The Bridge on the River Kwai".
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