John Huston’s trend-setting 1950 heist flick...

| Jan 22, 2024

... essentially launched the heist film as a genre of its own and set the blueprint that all subsequent heist dramas built upon.

| Nov 18, 2023

This film noir beauty largely set the template for Rafifi, The Killing, and all of the other classic heist flicks that would follow in its wake.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 8, 2023

Asphalt Jungle is a realistic, well directed, well written story of the underworld.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 2, 2020

A deadly serious, pitch black film noir, never once stopping for comic relief, genuine romantic interludes, or police procedural routines.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 15, 2020

What makes The Asphalt Jungle important is its vision of the crime world. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 20, 2019

Armed with a beautifully constructed screen play, John Huston has fashioned an exciting picture that avoids all the pitfalls of most crime movies.

| Apr 1, 2019

It was from this mean little film that the fundamental tenants of the modern heist movie were laid down.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 29, 2018

Deep in those shadows within the seedy underbelly of the city lies some of the most engrossing cinema ever made.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 1, 2018

a cracking-good crime story almost perfectly told

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 13, 2017

The characters are no mere cold symbolic avatars in a world gone stylistic; Huston breaks down that intellectual barrier, and allows the characters to shine in all their glorious dumb pathos.

| Jan 25, 2017

This is among the most generally influential American films of the 1950s.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 5, 2016

The Asphalt Jungle is a study in crime, hard-hitting in its expose of the underworld. Ironic realism is striven for and achieved in the writing, production and direction.

| Nov 3, 2008

One of the first films to depict crime from the POV of the deviants rather than the police, this seminal film (arguably Huston's best) had a huge influence on the genre, manifest in the early work of Kubrick--and decades later Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs

| Original Score: A | Apr 29, 2007

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 30, 2006

This tale of a jewel theft gone wrong is notable for its gritty procedural detail and an emphasis on the inner lives of the small time crooks, expertly played by Sterling Hayden and Sam Jaffe.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 11, 2006

One of The Asphalt Jungle's strengths is that the crims seem about as thick as you suspect they would be in real life: no Cruise or Clooney-style braniac super-athletes here.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 4, 2006

John Huston's greatest noir thriller.

| Jun 24, 2006

A preeminent example of tough-guy cinema.

| May 3, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 3, 2005