John Huston
1950
112 minutes
Thanks to Mad Magazine, you always got this film confused with Blackboard Jungle, which is a whole different film that stars Glenn Ford and Anne Francis (from Forbidden Planet), which is best known for "Rock Around the Clock". Asphalt Jungle is a John Huston heist film with Sterling Hayden and co-starring a bunch of other dudes along with Marilyn Monroe in a very early role. It's a heist film from 1950 with Sterling Hayden in it, so it's got that going for it. Unfortunately there's no happy ending for the crooks we're rooting for throughout the film. As happens too often in the 1950s, law and order prevails.
You should recognize more of these character actors, but you don't. You're bad with faces and weak on films of this era. One guy was in Duck Soup. The main woman was in Singin' in the Rain. There's another guy from Ben-Hur and The Day the Earth Stood Still, and still another dude from Wagon Train and a bunch of other westerns you haven't seen.
It's a heist film, but not one that fails in a terribly interesting way. When they blow up the safe, the explosion is too loud and sets off alarms, which seems depressingly realistic. No double-cross or triple-cross here. Just a loud noise that sends guards running. That's not to say it's a bad film and it almost certainly influenced some of the best heist films you know. And you could do worse than stare at Sterling Hayden being a dramatic crook for almost two hours.
Just go with it. There's not much to hate here, unless you're watching the colorized version for some fucking reason.
Time to choose something different: