Key Largo

Key Largo is a 1948 Film Noir adapted from Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play.

Humphrey Bogart plays Frank McCloud, who visits a shoddy, run-down hotel in Key Largo, Florida, that has been taken over by a notorious gangster named Rocco (Edward G. Robinson). The hotel is run by the disabled James Temple (Lionel Barrymore) and his daughter-in-law Nora (Lauren Bacall), the widow of Frank's old friend, they are helpless under Rocco and his gang. James mourns the loss of his son in Italy and wants him to have died a hero. A passing sheriff's deputy, checking on the place as a hurricane threatens to blow in, is also taken hostage by Rocco's gang. A group of local Seminoles try to find sanctuary but are forced to huddle outside as the storm approaches.

Rocco is waiting at the hotel to conduct business, and awaits the first chance to flee to Cuba where he'd been exiled by the feds. The hurricane arrives before the gang can do business and depart, and the mobsters are trapped with the hostages as the hurricane hits shore.


 * The Alcoholic: Gaye
 * The Bully: Rocco is this way to everyone, even to his own Mooks and alcoholic girlfriend Gaye.
 * Film Noir: Key Largo is considered one of the defining noirs.
 * Guile Hero: McCloud plays Rocco like a fiddle throughout the film, right up to the end.
 * Ironic Echo: Rocco spends most of the movie armed and dangerous, threatening to shoot the hostages on the slightest whim, taunting Frank as a coward for surviving the war. When the hurricane starts turning Rocco into a quivering mass, Frank taunts back: "You don't like it, do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don't you? If it doesn't stop, shoot it!"
 * The Mafia: Rocco and his gang are old professionals from the heyday of the 1930s. One of them talks about the possibility of Prohibition coming back, which would return the gang to their former glory.
 * Romancing the Widow: Frank with Nora, although it's mostly on her part. Frank is still dealing with the guilt of surviving the war where his friend - Nora's husband - hadn't.
 * The UST in this film is unbelievable, just waiting for them to kiss. And 
 * The So-Called Coward: Frank appears cowardly in Rocco's eyes because the "living war hero" refuses to pick up a gun and take a shot at the mobster. Nora and James both believe that Frank could tell the gun wasn't loaded from the weight, but Frank rebuffs such talk.
 * World War II: provides the backdrop to Frank's disillusionment.