The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Directed by John Huston
Recently paroled from prison, legendary burglar "Doc" Riedenschneider, with funding from Alonzo Emmerich, a crooked lawyer, gathers a small group of veteran criminals together in the Midwest for a big jewel heist.
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What critics compared The Asphalt Jungle to
If, as John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle" memorably insisted, "crime is a left-handed form of human endeavor," Anderson has been shrewd enough to see pornography in the same relation to show business in general and Hollywood in particular, to show it attracting the same kinds of dreamers desperate to make something halfway meaningful out of their lives.
Visual and thematic references to classics such as "The Godfather," "Once Upon a Time in America" and "The Asphalt Jungle" show that director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian are quite aware of their film's place in history.
It's been photographed by Robby Muller in the rich, almost liquid, black-and-white tones that recall films like ''The Big Heat'' and ''The Asphalt Jungle.''
John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) was a telling precursor to “Rififi,” but Dassin’s unforgettable centerpiece safecracking sequence — devoid of any music or dialogue — gave birth to a new subgenre of movies, the heist film.
They both owe something to John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950), which has the general idea but not the attention to detail.
Sandwiched between two great American heist flicks — John Huston's 1950 The Asphalt Jungle and Stanley Kubrick's 1956 The Killing — French writer-director Jules Dassin's Rififi employs the three-act structure that works well for any film of this nature: the meticulous planning of the robbery, the crime itself, and the aftermath during which things begin to unravel for the crooks involved.
The opening half-hour--the burglary of a jewelry store, filmed in meticulous detail--is as good as its inspiration in The Asphalt Jungle, but the film turns moralistic and sour in the last half, when the thieves fall out.
The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and that Stanley Kubrick would follow in The Killing a year later.
…compares more than favorably with the memorable Hollywood film "The Asphalt Jungle."
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But the film belongs to Rourke, who makes Marv into the epitome of the crime movie 20-watt muscle, channeling Sterling Hayden from "The Asphalt Jungle" and every role Mike Mazurki ever played.
'HEAT' IS AN ODD THOUGH OFTEN ENTERtaining blend of "The Asphalt Jungle" and "Oprah," a traditional cops-and-robbers story weirdly fitted out with long, earnest discussions of interpersonal relationships.
In its broadest outlines, "Heat" is an ironic/tragic heist movie in the tradition of John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle," in which character determines everything.
In the tradition of every crime movie dating to “The Asphalt Jungle,” Dom decides on “one last job” before hanging it up.
A crew of women teaming up to boldly go where so many male-dominated heist teams, from “Rififi” to “The Italian Job” to the “Ocean’s” films, from “The Asphalt Jungle” to “The Town” to “Logan Lucky,” have gone before?
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John Huston ("The Maltese Falcon"/"The African Queen"/"The Misfit"/"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre") directs and co-writes this much admired and imitated hard-boiled film noir, one of the first caper films told from the criminal's viewpoint, that is adapted from the novel by W.R. Burnett while the screenplay is by Ben Maddow.
Huston concentrates mostly on the film's performances, but like The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, he uses space, shadow and a very clever mise-en-scene to physically illustrate the film's themes.
Whether prospecting for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, plotting to steal a fortune in diamonds in The Asphalt Jungle, aiming to sink a German battleship with The African Queen, chasing God and vengeance and Moby Dick, hunting wild mustangs in The Misfits, getting battered to win a purse in Fat City, or dreaming of a kingdom in Kafiristan as The Man Who Would Be King, Huston’s motley crew of questers never really find anything but themselves.