This is not your typical flashy, experienced caper crew. A group of somewhat incompetent working class thieves attempt to rob a pawn shop in Rome, using a increasingly complicated scheme that involves boring through a wall to get to a jewelry safe. This hilarious Italian heist comedy helped supercharge the career of the legendary actor Marcello Mastroianni ( La Dolce Vita, 8½) and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1959 Oscars. The Asphalt Jungle is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu. Every bit of the movie’s heist and its aftermath remain just as exciting and tense as any other movie on the list. Even after more than 70 years, it’s rare for a movie to trust its audience to keep up this much. Names of crime bosses are constantly thrown out and criminal terms are said left and right without a second for the audience to catch their breath. While the building-the-crew scenes and tense moments during the crime are all recognizable as modern heist-movie hallmarks, one thing that stands out is just how dense this movie is.ĭirector John Huston, who also wrote the script with Ben Maddow, manages to create a complete criminal underworld in this unnamed town in just under two hours. The Asphalt Jungle is arguably the first heist film, at least in the way we think of it today. A crime movie classic, The Asphalt Jungle follows a petty criminal named Dix Handley who’s hired onto a crew to complete a $500,000 jewel heist that quickly goes wrong.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |