Key Largo

Warner Bros. | Release Date: July 31, 1948

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

74	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Dave Kehr

A little windy and rhetorical for my taste, but still one of John Huston’s best efforts (1948), a melodrama of ethics that soundly represses the Maxwell Anderson play it was based on (the ending is actually a lift from To Have and Have Not). Read full review

EmpireIan Nathan

Perfectly tense atmosphere and performances, with the sparks flying between Bogart and Bacall. Read full review

Josh Larsen

Key Largo belongs to its villain, through and through. Read full review

Bosley Crowther

The script prepared by Mr. Huston and Richard Brooks was too full of words and highly cross-purposed implications to give the action full chance. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

A tense film thriller has been developed from Maxwell Anderson's play, Key Largo. Emphasis is on tension in the telling, and effective use of melodramatic mood has been used to point up the suspense. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

Maxwell Anderson's poetic-political play about crime and fascism, set in a "Petrified Forest"-style ensemble during a Key West hurricane, was turned by Huston and co-writer Richard Brooks into a crackling thriller. [27 Nov 1998, p.Q]

Maureen Lee Lenker

Key Largo is heaps of fun if you’re willing to go along for the ride, but perhaps slightly more silly than audiences might expect (or creators intend). Read full review

Pauline Kael

What the play was supposed to be about -- which was dim enough in the original -- is even more obscure in the script that he and Richard Brooks (then a screenwriter) prepared, but the movie is so confidently and entertainingly directed that nobody is likely to complain.

Chloe Walker

Seventy-five years after its original release, Key Largo proves that there’s a timelessness to great acting, a visceral thrill to watching legends go toe-to-toe that doesn’t dull with age. Read full review

The TelegraphStaff (Not Credited)

Fans of the genre will enjoy the scene in which Robinson's moll sings Moanin' Low, about a woman trapped in a relationship with a cruel man. [06 Aug 2011, p.30]

Staff (Not Credited)

Although the characters are basically stereotypes, they are lent the gift of life by a superlative cast: Robinson as the truculent Little Caesar, Bogart as an embittered ex-Army officer, Bacall as the innocent who loves him, and above all Trevor as the gangster's disillusioned, drink-sodden moll. Read full review