War hero Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) arrives by bus in the Florida Keys, where authorities are on the hunt for two Seminole Indians who have broken out of prison. He reaches the Hotel Largo to visit the father and the widow of a man in McCloud’s regiment who was killed in the battle of San Pietro.

The wheelchair bound, whippersnapper old man (Lionel Barrymore) runs the hotel with the help of his daughter Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), who drifted down to the Florida Keys with her late husband and never left. She casts a few welcome looks McCloud’s way as they board up the hotel before a hurricane bears down on the place.

McCloud’s presence irritates some suspicious thugs hanging out in the lobby, who announce the hotel is closed and refuse to serve him a drink, until a lush (Claire Trevor) demands he be made one. Nora informs McCloud that the men booked the entire hotel for a week and their mysterious benefactor never leaves his room.

It is revealed that the man is exiled gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson, receiving top billing) who has returned to the states and is laying low in the hotel until he can complete a deal. He’s beaten and abducted a nosy cop and as the hurricane approaches, holds McCloud, Nora and the old man hostage until his deal can be finished.

Directed by John Huston from a screenplay Richard Brooks and Huston adapted from a play by Maxwell Anderson, Key Largo is a solid, if not thrilling, pairing between Bogart and Bacall, the fourth and final time the stars would appear opposite each other in a film.

Brooks and Huston hammered out a script based only loosely on Anderson’s play, which concerned a Spanish Civil War deserter squaring off against Mexican banditos. While their story is seething with post-war disillusionment, Brooks & Huston unfortunately retain the overly talkative, sometimes hokey nature of staged dialogue.

What works are the characters, tossed together in a confined space and looking for some kind of return to their former greatness. In addition to Bogart, again playing the world weary and reluctant hero, a scenery chewing Robinson seeks respect in the underworld, his goons ponder life under Prohibition again, while Claire Trevor’s boozing flame wants her former glory as a nightclub singer. She steals every scene she’s in and won a well deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Huston shuns action or suspense – the hurricane is the least interesting business here, with wave footage lifted from a Ronald Reagan flick called Night Unto Night – in favor of character study and some minor intrigue taking place mostly in the hotel. This results in a much more low key, less surly Bogart and Bacall than I expected.

Thomas Gomez, Harry Lewis, Dan Seymour and William Haade are featured as Curly, Toots, Angel and Ralphie, Rocco’s colorful thugs. Karl Freund, the cinematographer of Citizen Kane lit the film and the score was by Max Steiner, who composed the music for Casablanca. Key Largo is not nearly on that level, but is well made and worth a look for Bogie and Bacall fans.