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The Asphalt Jungle Movie Review

The Asphalt Jungle is a 1950 heist noir film directed by John Huston and starring Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe and Marilyn Monroe. It’s a solid, but not great film.

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“One way or another, we all work for our vice“

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After a criminal is released from jail, he decides to steal precious jewellery with the help of a lawyer and a few other men. Even though they commit the heist successfully, they fall into trouble. This movie turned out to be highly influential not just in the crime genre, but also for kick-starting the heist genre basically. And the heist here is quite good and pretty engaging.

But I didn’t care for the plot here and that was the film’s biggest flaw. There are too many twists, turns, machinations and complications that prevented me from fully being invested in the story. The character count is also way too high with only a couple of people standing out from the rest.

Sterling Hayden is reliably good in the main role and he was the best cast actor of the bunch. Sam Jaffe was nominated for an Oscar and he was very good, but his role is quite minor. There are numerous other characters and most are quite underdeveloped. The film is famous for featuring the debut of Marilyn Monroe and she was definitely great here. The fact that she stole the film and in such a small role speaks volumes of her charisma as an actress.

The Asphalt Jungle has a very striking ending. The dialogue is also quite good. I also really appreciated the title of the movie and how it depicts the city as pretty much a jungle where anything can happen. The underworld of criminals is so realistically depicted, especially grounded for the time.

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The movie also looks good and is well directed by Huston, but this is one of his lesser films nonetheless due to a weaker screenplay, an overly brisk pace and too many things going on at all times, but not much sticking out as memorable or riveting.