The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Boy Erased
Ant-Man and the Wasp
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Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
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Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (14) | Top Critics (2) | Fresh (10) | Rotten (4) | DVD (1)
If Beat the Devil puzzled audiences on its first release, it has charmed them since.
he film ranges from the diffident to the grotesque, with Huston selecting his lenses to make the performers look as freakish as possible.
It operates under the assumption that everyone in it is drunk, lusty, a little crooked, and a little crazy, and once you tune in to their wavelength, it's fun to just hang out with them for an hour and a half.
A clever if confusing spoof of the genre pictures [John] Huston had made in a more serious manner in previous years
It looks like it's going to be a riot, but turns out almost laugh free.
An all-star home movie.
Perhaps the oddest film Humphrey Bogart ever made.
You have to wonder what Capote and John Huston were thinking in trying to make a satire that didn't have any actual jokes.
Beat the Devil is too comedy to be an adventure movie and too much of an adventure movie to be a comedy. You'd think getting John Huston & Humphrey Bogart (and Peter Lorre, too!) together again would be a great thing but the more I see of Bogart's filmography from the 50s, the more I realize that it just wasn't his decade. Beat the Devil is just a collection of unrealized possibilities. A great con picture that never happened, a great heist picture that could've been and what in the hell could possibly possess a man to choose Jennifer Jones over Gina Lollobrigida? Beyond that you're just in for some nice scenery (Lollobrigida included) and a mess hiding behind the guise of amusement at the end.
Super Reviewer
An oddball collection of individuals from varying backgrounds and parts of the globe board a ship bound for Africa to seek their fortunes. Obviously an homage to Huston's classic debut The Maltese Falcon, Beat The Devil is a curious mix of comedy and intrigue that doesn't really work as either. The collection of racial stereotypes on display farcically bumping into each other, engaging in affairs and hushed conversations made it feel like an Agatha Christie murder mystery; but with out the murder. Or the mystery. Bogie coasts through the film with a look of mild amusement exercising his usual dry wit and Robert Morley seems to be doing a kind of stuffy Sidney Greenstreet impersonation, but all the characters are really rather annoying and it's kind of difficult to care what happens to any of them. The ladies were easy on the eye and Bogart is always worth watching but during the whole thing I just wished I was watching Across the Pacific instead.
A great cast in a great movie about a bunch of thieves. I highly recommend this movie.
with more fast shuffling than any fred and ginger effort, and much like "the usual suspects" wherein all are guilty until...well, forget about 'em not being guilty is all, and with a wink and a smile tossed in for spice, this is a bankers holiday for all involved and it shows. jennifer jones nearly steals the show and would if there wasn't such stiff competition. not an honest scene in this stew of lovable rogues out for a con.
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