Cheap High Sierra (DVD) (Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart) (Raoul Walsh) Price

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Customer Reviews of High Sierra

Bogart on the Run
In High Sierra, Humphrey Bogart plays one of those characters that we shouldn't admire because he has led a "bad" life of crime, yet somehow we find ourselves rooting for him to get what he wants, because we suspect he's a decent guy at heart that didn't get the right breaks. In other words, he's a complicated character, and in the hands of Bogart, he's well played and very compelling. Ida Lupino gives another one of her intense performances as the girl who loves him and who herself is in need of a break. Joan Leslie plays a teenage girl that Bogart helps out and falls in love with. Leslie seems like an unlikely choice for Bogart to love. She's too young and there isn't any chemistry between them at all. But for me, that's about the only real flaw in this film. Director Raoul Walsh blends a lot of elements together: gangsters, bank caper, chase scenes, love story, and drama at a very human level. And he blends those elements into an excellent movie.

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Bogart and Lupino at their best
In HIGH SIERRA Humphrey Bogart plays professional criminal Roy Earle who is pardoned from prison because of the influence of a crime boss named Big Mac. Bogart is paid advance money to report to Big Mac in California. Mac is planning to use him to lead a small gang in pulling off a jewelry robbery at a swank resort hotel.

En route to California Bogart helps a distressed family he meets at the scene of a minor traffic accident. He is attracted to the granddaughter who is played by Joan Leslie. She has a deformed foot which Bogart arranges to have fixed by a surgeon in California. When he arrives at the hideout he finds two cheap crooks and a dance hall girl waiting for him. One of the hotel employees is also involved in the robbery scheme.

The suspense builds rapidly from this point on as we await the outcome of both the holdup and also the romances which are developing simultaneously between Bogart and the two women.

Ida Lupino gives a stellar performance as the former dance hall girl whose love for Bogart isn't really appreciated until it may be too late.

Bogart and Lupino are at their best in this film. A Strong supporting cast includes Arthur Kennedy, Alan Curtis, Henry Hull, Henry Travis, Jerome Cowan and Cornell Wilde. There is also a small dog in the cast who will win your admiration and break your heart. Raoul Walsh is known for his direction of many other fine movies including ROARING TWENTIES and THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE.

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Bogart Breakout
This was the first of the George Raft reject parts that transformed Humphrey Bogart from James Cagney's second banana into...Bogart. The next two were "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca". In "High Sierra" Bogart plays a sociopath bank heister who still has a shred of humanity left, something like Frankenstein's monster but not as bulky. The character originally was stitched together from a number of Public Enemies by novelist W. R. Burnett. Bogart's performance is completely un-maudlin and genuine and like all his best work continues to last as the modern touchstone of American film acting. Another great directing job by Raoul Walsh as well, a man who could handle about anything the studio threw his way.