My Review of "The Maltese Falcon"

The Maltese Falcon is a mystery film that came out in 1941. I remember seeing this when I was younger. At the time, I thought it was pretty clever and fun. Maybe after all this time, this film would still be able to entertain me. It's been so long that I forgot all about it, so it's like seeing it for the first time again.

It all starts out at the office of private detectives Sam Spade and Miles Archer. A beautiful woman, Brigid, is waiting to speak with them. She's telling them that she needs their help. Already there are red flags from their encounter with her. She uses her sexual attraction to lure these private detectives to do her bidding.

Sam doesn't quite bit, but his partner Miles is totally into it. They cautiously take on the case but the situation gets bad real fast. Pretty soon there's murders everywhere and Sam has to figure out what the heck is going on. It isn't so easy because each of the characters that he encounters is really shady. Eventually all will be revealed but it'll take some interesting conversations to get to that part.

This movie is not for everyone. It's kind of a blast from the 40s. By today's standards, the acting is quite different. The cast sort of plays out like stage actors. There's a weird cartoony exaggeration to each of their portrayals. You have to get used to that because it can be off putting for some. In addition, they use a lot of 40s vernacular throughout the movie. For the most part, I was able to understand what they were getting at. There are some sayings that are quite weird. I guess some people may like this movie because of this quirky aspect of it.

I do love the way that they're able to make us as the audience distrustful. We don't know who to trust in this movie. Yet, we have Sam who is ever so cunning throughout the runtime. He's able to decipher small quirks about a character to see if they're being truthful or not. This is a very clever addition but very subtle. At a quick glance you might not totally understand how Sam has such superhuman ways of telling people apart. I guess people were a lot different back then. We would pay more attention to body language and inflection in speech.

There is no action but the pacing is okay for this sort of movie. Again it was made back in the day so some people might not appreciate the old timey film making. They take their time for panning, scanning and focus. It's to give certain things extra drama or accentuate certain things that are part of the story. Today, we kind of rush movies with a ton of jump cuts and this older method of film making is tough to get used to. Even I was somewhat bored at times trying to keep my attention for what was going on.

Still this movie isn't all that bad but by today's standards it feels a little mediocre. That sounds weird because this movie is quite influential for a lot of the movies we see today. The problem is that even though it was first, that doesn't mean that its still going to be as entertaining to modern viewers today. It might help if you're in a certain mood to enjoy this movie.

Overall, it was a bit of a slog to watch this one. I feel bad because I did genuinely like this movie years back when I first saw it. Today, I've seen so many entertaining movies that it sort of desensitized myself to this. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this movie and I wouldn't watch it again. I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10.