Armed robber Roy Earle (Humphrey Bogart) is pardoned after eight years in prison. After stopping by what used to be his family farm in Indiana, Earle checks in with the benefactor who got him out, but discovers an ex-cop named Kranmer (Barton MacLane) there instead. Kramner orders Earle to the Nevada-California border to rob a fancy resort for the boss. He complies, but when Kramner gets out of line, Earle slaps him.

At a gas station on the gate of the Sierra Mountains, Earle meets a family headed to L.A., including their pretty 20-year-old granddaughter Velma (Joan Leslie), whom Earle later learns has a club foot. Velma represents everything pure and innocent in the world, and Earle pledges to help her out once he gets his loot.

Arriving at a fishing cabin in the Sierras, Earle meets the two amateurs on his crew, their inside man at the resort, and Marie Garcon (Ida Lupino), the hard times girlfriend of one of the thieves. Earle wants her to scram, but she tells him that she wanted out of her past as bad as he wanted out of prison, and he allows her to stay. Earle also takes in a jinxed mutt named “Pard” whose previous three caretakers all died.

While casing the resort and keeping the amateurs from fighting over the dame, Earle makes good on his promise to help Velma and pays a mob doctor to give her an operation. But he learns that she’s still in love with some guy back home and had no intention of leaving him. Having to lay low after the job, Earle discovers the only person he can rely on is Marie, and the two try to hide from the cops long enough for Earle’s employers to fence the jewels he’s robbed.

Directed by Raoul Walsh, from a screenplay John Huston and W.R. Burnett adapted from Burnett’s novel, High Sierra was the film that established Bogart as a major star. Even though Ida Lupino – who was riding high with the success of They Drive By Night – ended up getting top billing, this was Bogart’s opportunity to break away from playing gangsters named “Duke” or “Bugs” and showcase his talents with a deeper role.

The film is a fine piece that allows Bogart to play a hard boiled thief plotting a heist to repay his debts, while at the same time, showing a softer side by wooing a crippled girl, playing with a dog and connecting with another human being. While not an action film per se, a climactic pursuit winding up the Sierra Mountains, which Walsh insisted be shot on location instead of at Burbank Studios, is thrilling.

Ida Lupino is a terrific actress, but miscast here. She’s far too dignified to be believed as desperate gutter trash. You can almost picture her sipping a martini in a smoke filled nightclub before her family chauffeur drives her home. Bogart does have chemistry with Joan Leslie, who is not much of an actress, but you can see it in his eyes that he really loves who he thinks the girl is and wants to be with her.

There’s nothing to the heist or any of the supporting characters at all, but Huston’s screenplay features some sharp dialogue, like a mob doctor who tells Earle, “This is the land of milk and honey for the health racket. Every woman in California thinks she’s either too fat or too thin or too something.” Walsh handles the action scenes well.

I’d recommend this for Bogart fans, but for the casual viewer, Bogart would star in much finer films with better casts on his way to becoming the highest paid actor in the world by the late ’40s.