The best crook film that's ever been made. Certainly it's the best I've ever seen. Because of brilliant casting, acting and direction it does what every thriller should do: thrills you genuinely and tremendously from start to finish.

| Nov 16, 2022

The story is strong of itself with an unusual ending and fine acting, but it is the treatment which makes it the best thriller so far this year.

| Nov 16, 2022

It is (and this is rare in American films) a work of entertainment that is yet so skillfully constructed that after many years and many viewings it has the same brittle explosiveness -- and even some of the same surprise -- that it had in its first run.

| Nov 16, 2022

Messrs. Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang, filmdom's ace thriller directors, had better look to their laurels, for they are facing dangerous competition in John Huston.

| Nov 16, 2022

Good direction of a good story with top ranking talent makes The Maltese Falcon one of the best mystery films of recent months.

| Nov 11, 2022

Humphrey Bogart's Sam is all that the most rabid Hammett fan could wish him to be, while Sydney Greenstreet and Mary Astor are just about perfect in their roles.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 11, 2022

[John Huston] has taken his own adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's hardboiled crime yarn and stretched it so taut that it fairly sings in your ears.

| Nov 11, 2022

The Maltese Falcon has been made before, but never like this. If chief credit goes to Huston, there is still a large and fancy slice left for the players. Humphrey Bogart gives the performance of his career.

| Nov 11, 2022

It is a good picture except for the voluminous plot explanations, but they were part of Dashiell Hammett's book so I suppose I must not complain.

| Nov 11, 2022

The picture achieves what hundreds of routine detective stories fail to achieve -- genuine mystery, suspense and drama.

| Nov 11, 2022

This is really a movie that keeps you guessing. It's brilliantly acted.

| Nov 11, 2022

It is one of the most satisfactory portrayals Bogart has given for some time, and practically no other actor could be better cast for the role.

| Nov 11, 2022

The Maltese Falcon somehow misses the excitement of Dashell Hammett's "thriller," but Mr. Lorre does not fail to provide yet another original study of a sinister human being totally unlike anybody else and yet tinglingly alive.

| Nov 11, 2022

A mystery film that rises far above the level of the usual "who-done-its."

| Nov 11, 2022

If half of Hollywood’s remakes turned out as well as The Maltese Falcon, the studios could stop buying stories for a while.

| Nov 10, 2022

The strange, dreamlike tension of the film escalates with each new confrontation, each new tailing, each new beating...

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 17, 2021

Yes, they're all after a priceless statuette of a bird, but the pleasure is in the journey.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 17, 2021

Few films have been so devoid of sentiment and so brutally realistic. For all this, and its definitely dramatic atmosphere, the production is, on the whole, disappointing, chiefly because of the obscureness of its plot.

| Jun 23, 2021

On a number of accounts it is distinguished celluloid entertainment, but it is of great interest to the trade because it reveals, in startling terms, the unheralded talent of topflight scenarist, John Huston.

| Oct 3, 2018

The Maltese Falcon is the first crime melodrama with finish, speed and bang to come along in what seems ages.

| Aug 29, 2012