Rating: 
Summary: The Maltese Falcon is Sensational
Review: Humphrey Bogart in this 1941 film created the image he was to carry through the rest of his career! Bogart plays the role of Sam Spade in this detective thriller. Spade is a private eye with few loyalties. The only motivation behind this man is a desire to find who killed his partner, even at the expense of losing his love, Brigid O'Shaughnessy (played by Mary Astor). Bogart brings his talents to this film in such a way as no other. He never lacks in wit. And he definately knows how to handle gun-toting hires! Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre back up this film with superb performances! A definate classic and a definate buy for all video libraries!
Rating: 
Summary: Sticking with my VHS copy for now
Review: I would love to own a restored version of the Maltese Falcon on DVD, if it existed. I'll just stick with my 10 year old VHS tape for now. The film needs to be restored. Take a look at the way the second scene with Spade and Mrs. Archer ends. The film always seems broken at this spot, even when it runs on the movie channel.
Rating:
Summary: A Bogart classic
Review:
Director: John Huston
Format: Black & White
Studio: Warner Studios
Video Release Date: February 1, 2000
Cast: Humphrey Bogart ... Private Detective Sam Spade
Mary Astor ... Brigid O'Shaughnessy
Gladys George ... Iva Archer
Peter Lorre ... Joel Cairo
Barton MacLane ... Det. Lt. Dundy
Lee Patrick ... Effie Perine
Sydney Greenstreet ... Kasper Gutman
Ward Bond ... Det. Tom Polhaus
Jerome Cowan ... Miles Archer
Elisha Cook Jr. ... Wilmer Cook
James Burke ... Luke
Murray Alper ... Frank Richman
John Hamilton ... Bryan
Charles Drake ... Reporter
Chester Gan ... Bit part
Creighton Hale ... Stenographer
Robert Homans ... Policeman
William Hopper ... Reporter
Walter Huston ... Capt. Jacobi
Hank Mann ... Reporter
Jack Mower ... Announcer
Emory Parnell ... Ship's mate This is a cult classic Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) film. The cast included all-time greats Peter Lorre, Sidney Greestreet, Walter Huston, Ward Bond, and other veterans like Mary Astor and Jerome Cowan. John Huston directed, and kept the tension high throughout. This is a story about a statue of a falcon that the Knights Templar had made as a gift for the King of Spain in gratitude. It was lost in transit to the king. Crusted with jewels of immense value, but covered with black lacquer to disguise its worth, it was lost for centuries. This story is about the struggle between factions of villains to get the bird. If you have never see Bogart in this movie, you have missed one which is partly responsible for his fame. Joseph (Joe) Pierre
Rating:
Summary: "The uhhh... stuff that dreams are made of."
Review: "The Maltese Falcon" is such a famous movie, and so often parodied, that it can be difficult to separate your mind from it's history and just enjoy it. If you can do that, you are in for a treat.
This if Film Noir at it's finest. All the dames are dangerously beautiful, and all the detectives are hard-boiled.  Never, ever trust the Fat Man or anyone named Joel Cairo.   Tense, moody and harsh are all adjectives that describe this film. The dialog is as sharp and as clever as Jane Austin. "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." The ending scene is one of cinema's greatest. You just can't go wrong with a true classic of this caliber. The DVD is great. The black and white is crisp and clear, and completely essential to the mood of the flick. Why anyone ever colorized the Maltese Falcon is beyond me, but here it is completely restored. The extra feature, "Becoming Attractions," is very interesting. It examines the Hollywood selling of Humphrey Bogart from background "heavy" to leading man.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic Bogart
Review: This is Bogart in top form. Despite less than stunning performances from Mary Astor and Elisha Cook Jr. and some decidedly cliché film noir moments/lighting/music, this film comes out brimming with oodles of dark charm and black humor thanks to Bogie's inimitable persona and Huston's clever script. Nevermind the faults, this is pure Bogart magic from start to finish, replete with inexplicably satisfying oddities (when Bogart kisses Astor for the first time, his cold gesture has all the passion of a dead fish, but as he holds her face in his hands, he presses her cheeks with his thumbs in a deliciously unsettling way) and classic Bogie gems (his deliberate explosion at Gutman's hotel made me guffaw in admiration). All cool cucumber and sly sweet-talking, Sam Spade is the private eye to end all private eyes. When all is said and done and it turns out that it was all for nothing, Bogie takes the bogus prize in his hands and calls it "the stuff that dreams are made of." In the wonderful world of noir, dreams are all disappointment and unfulfilled hopes. And we love to keep coming back for more.
Rating:
Summary: The Maltese Falcon
Review: This film is one of Humphrey Bogart's best.
Sam Spade and Miles Archer are a couple of San Francisco gumshoes who are as hard-boiled as they come. But a pretty girl walks into their office one day with a false name, a story full of holes and Archer's fate firmly in her grasp. When Miles falls victim to the ruse, it's up to Sam Spade to get to the bottom of it; even at the cost of his own reputation which is already severely in question. A greasy little worm named Cairo and a fat man weave a more complex tapestry of intrigue as Spade is led on a quest for "the stuff dreams are made of". With the success of "The Petrified Forest", Bogart appended his fame in tough gumshoe roles, much the same way as Edward G. Robinson established his at the same studio; with roles on the other side of the law. John Huston was to cross paths with him once more for a third and fourth effort in Technicolor, namely; "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and finally "The African Queen". It may well be said that both Huston and Bogart gleaned the cream of their respective careers from each other, thus leaving a combined cinematic legacy unmatched by any other such combination of talent, and certainly giving Warner Brothers a cornerstone of integrity in the world of film. Particularly notable supporting performance from Lee Patrick as Spade's harried secretary.
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Summary: "SUCCESS, TO CRIME"-Sam Spade (Bogart)
Review: So toasts private detective Sam Spade to two other cops investigating two murders; one of the victims was Sam Spade's partner Miles Archer. It seems a strange toast to me, yet without crime they'd all three be unemployed, and you can only catch criminals when they're in the middle of a crime's commission. Little does Sam Spade realize what hoodlums Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) is mixed up with nor to what object they're all intensely, insanely devoted to obtaining. The Maltese Falcon was a small statuette encrusted with rare jewels that the Knights Templars of Malta in 1539 sent as tribute to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, also King of Spain. The statue was intercepted by pirates, never to make it to Spain. At the end of the movie, you'll probably think, like me, all that for a stupid, black bird statue! This movie was rated by the American Film Institute (AFI) as one of the top 100 movies of all time, one of the first of the film-noir genre. It was a budget film for the time, and John Huston's first attempt at directing. Truly a film classic, the plot so thick it would take many times watching it to figure out exactly what all transpired. For Bogie aficionados, a keeper!
Rating:
Summary: The stuff dreams are made of...
Review: Bogart is SAM SPADE!!!! Every private detective movie is based on this one movie. That alone should speak volumes about how great this movie truly is. However you add Sidney Greenestreet and Peter Lorrie, and this movie is unforgetable. Spade and Archer Detective Agency land a simple gig helping a beautiful woman rescue her sister from a sleezy guy. Archer goes to rescue the sister and Spade goes to Archer's wife for some undercover work. Later that night Archer ends up dead. Who killed him and why? The list of suspects multiplies quickly, however the stand out suspect is the uncooperative Detective that was sleeping with Archer's wife; Sam Spade (Bogart). This movie is the proof that other detective movies are made from and you can see that the original Detective flick is the best.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Solid Film Noir
Review: I have yet to be convinced that Humphrey Bogart is the acting stud that he is proclaimed to be. Rather I seem to think that he just represented the ideals of the audience of his time, in many respects Tom Cruise fills that role today. Not that they aren't both good actors, only that had their birth dates had been reversed both of them would have been less famous. That said I think this film is a perfect example of my thesis. Here Bogart is smarter and funnier than everybody else in his world, and he remains calm even in the face of police pressure (I can't even stand up to the health department). The end result is an entertaining film which piles mystery on top of mystery and never has time to bore the audience. The audience is far too bust wondering about the Maltese Falcon, and the murder mystery, and what those femme fatales are up to. The dialogue is sharp and the script is tight. In the negative category I would be remiss if I didn't mention the awful fight choreography. Watch for the kick throw by Wilmer that would have had him thrown out of the WWE. Also, unless it was just my imagination I noticed a slew of bad cuts. Still the movie is well worth your time, and when you finish check out "Chinatown" which plays off the mystique of this film. 3.5 out of 5
Rating:
Summary: One of the world's finest films.
Review: The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
That The Maltese Falcon was John Huston's directorial debut says, by the cast and crew he was able to assemble for it, a good deal about how respected he already was in Hollywood by the time he directed this, both as actor and screenwriter. Huston would go on, of course, to perch at the top of Hollywood's A-list for decades, and more than any other film he directed with the arguable exception of The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon shows every reason why.
Humphrey Bogart plays Dashiell Hammett's immortal antihero Sam Spade, and more than any other actor, Bogart has come to represent Spade in film form, despite having never made another Spade movie and looking nothing like the "blond Satan" described in Hammett's novel. What is, perhaps, most sunning about Bogart's performance (if it is not his best, it is tied with The African Queen and The Desperate Hours for that honor) is that so much of the book was removed, including most every scene that illuminates Spade's relationship with Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and Bogart still brings the role to life even for those who have no idea who Sam Spade is. Mary Astor, an A-list star at the time (The Maltese Falcon was her ninety-eighth film) who has since fallen into relative obscurity, plays the duplicitous Ms. O'Shaughnessy to the hilt, both helpless and manipulative at the same time; Astor's portrayal of O'Shaughnessy still stands over sixty years later as one of the most subtle and nuanced performances to ever grace a screen. Peter Lorre, riding a wave of success that started with his amazing performance in M and continued through the Hammer horror films he made just prior to his death, gives what for any other actor would be a career-best performance as Joel Cairo; for Lorre, it ranks with his performance in M. The main characters are rounded out by Sydney Greenstreet, in his debut film role at the age of fifty-nine, and Elisha Cook, Jr., almost forty but looking surprisingly like the twenty-one-year-old tough of Hammett's novel.
If there is a flaw to the film, and in most films it is the major flaw, it is that Huston's adaptation of Hammett's novel is, to say the least, a bit lacking in continuity and substance. What Huston managed to preserve, however, is the flavor; what parts of the novel exist in the film are rabidly faithful to their source material, and some of the cuts have obvious reasons given the time the movie was made (for example, the casual sex between Spade and O'Shaughnessy, or his strip-search of her at the beginning of the book's long climax). The relationships between the characters are altered for the film, but Huston has covered all the bases, making sure the alterations don't leave wear at the edges. In other words, Huston has crafted a perfect script out of a flawed adaptation, and for that reason it's impossible to find fault with the adaptation. Even the plot holes seem as if they're put in for effect.
The music is a tad overdone, but hey, it was 1941. What do you expect?
If there is such a thing as a perfect film, The Maltese Falcon is one of them. *****
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