[rating: 5] Humphrey Bogart did the same thing in every movie, to different degrees, from thoroughly grizzled in The African Queen to—for Bogart—downright sentimental in Casablanca. The question, then, is when he did it best. Was Sam Spade the peak Bogart character? Or Philip Marlowe? It's nearly impossible to choose, but an argument can be mounted that Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is Bogart's greatest achievement. We first meet up with Dobbs in desperation and penury, homeless and begging on the streets of Tampico. All he wants is to get his head above water, to live comfortably without having to depend on handouts from rich American vacationers. Nothin' fancy, just freedom from poverty. Even when he first hits on the idea of prospecting for gold, his ambitions remain modest. Howard (Walter Huston, in one of the best-deserved Academy Award winning performances of all time), another drifter with some experience as a prospector, tells him what gold does to a man, the way getting a little only makes you hungry for a whole lot more. Dobbs insists that won't happen to a simple, reasonable man like him, that he'll just collect his little piece and go home. We know better, ...