The dark urban world of The Asphalt Jungle is one of the
essential destinations in film noir, but be warned: despite tough
guy Sterling Hayden's dreams of bucolic escape, there is no way
out. John Huston directed this superbly calibrated crime classic,
which displays his usual wry appreciation of fringies and
down-and-outers. This time the task for Huston's eccentric ensemble
is a jewel robbery, which--this being a Huston film--can't possibly
work out as well as its plan. The cast includes Sam Jaffee,
indelible as a criminal mastermind, and the pre-stardom Marilyn
Monroe. Hayden plays the kind of mug he would revisit in Stanley
Kubrick's The Killing, which is an informal homage to this film.
And the film's look is definitive: both artful and gritty, it
creates a noir landscape that traps its people just as surely as
the tar pits trapped the dinosaurs. No wonder they call it
noir.
This cache was placed by a member of the
Florida
Geocaching Association