Here's a little confession: movies that tend to be highly rated, or widely known in pop-culture, I try to avoid, because I'm usually disappointed - and that goes for both classic and contemporary films. That is, of course, unless the subject matter or the actors/director appeal to me. Neither is the case with this movie - which leads to me a second confession: I'm really not a big Bogie fan.
The movie follows Humphrey Bogart as Fredd C. Dobbs, an American living in Mexico, begging on the streets to make a living. He eventually meets up with a fellow American sleeping on the park bench, and the two of them go to work on the oil rigs, only to be swindled out of their pay. While staying at a shelter they meet an older man with experience in mining gold. He has the brains, and they have the brawn; and despite the old man warning them that the lure for gold usually ruins men, they set out to pan for gold.
The plan is to split the haul (or "the goods" as they repeatedly say) equally, despite Dobbs putting in most of the money, after winning a local lottery to pay for their equipment and donkeys. Once they start finding gold, they must decide if they split it now and each man is responsible for guarding their own, or if they keep it all together, and only split it once they return to the city. They decide on the former, and for a point in the movie it becomes equally a western, and a psychological study on how the idea of riches changes a man altogether.
Bad guys arrive, there's a shootout, and one guy - a fourth guy that had joined them - dies but the three men press on. At one point the older man is called back to a tribe of natives after he had helped heal a young boy in the tribe, and Dobbs takes off with the loot, shooting and leaving for dead his friend.
The pack of bad guys arrive again, and come upon Dobbs alone and dehydrated. They steal all the donkeys and animal pelts, and the rip up the bags of "goods", dismissing it as nothing but sand. Eventually the nice guy and older guy come upon the body of Dobbs and the empty bags. They cut their loses and head back to the city.
More stuff happens, but I really don't care. It's a Western, and it's a guy's movie and I really didn't like it. In the end, the two left living are able to re-claim at least the pelts they had from their time on the mountain, and can sell those for money. They satisfy themselves with not being rich - the older man deciding to return to the tribe he helped as they now treat him like the kind. The nice guy decides to visit the widow of the nice guy - she does, after all have a fruit tree farm, which is his dream to own.
Blah, blah, the end.
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