Nonetheless, The Asphalt Jungle and The African Queen are still promoted as 'great,' which demonstates that the lesser works of legendary directors attract more interest and attention than works of equal quality by directors who never made a truly exceptional film.

The Asphalt Jungle is better than The African Queen, and it is much better than most films of any era. The characters are memorable, the action is compelling, and the direction is slick. Certainly, it is highly influential. Much superior films, such as Kubrick's The Killing and Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs owe much to the style and story flow of The Asphalt Jungle.

The characters are exaggerated, of course, but this makes them no less interesting. We are offered a sniveling, sweaty bookie (Marc Lawrence); the glum-faced and none-too-bright tough guy anti-hero (Sterling Hayden); the relentless but tediously humorless racketeer buster (John McIntire); the cynical, confession-beating cop on the take (Barry Kelley); the pathetic hostess with a heart of gold (Jean Hagen); the lecherous yet unflappable aged heist manager (Sam Jaffe); the spendthrift and playboy executive (Louis Calhern) whose greed and lack of scruples digs his own grave.

The Production Code ensures that they will all go down, except of course the crime busting Police Commissioner, who burns several minutes of screen time laboriously proving that most cops are good. Or, at least, that all cops are good most of the time. The thickly applied 'crime doesn't pay' morality turns the final third of the film into a checklist. Yep, that guy got what's coming to him. Who's next?

Some of these resolutions are overly dramatic. The most satisfying has Jaffe staying too long at a soda shop, as his weakness for teenage girls leads to an arrest without shouting or gunplay. The silliest ending involves Hayden, but I've revealed too much already.

Marilyn Monroe, one of the most famous actresses of the 1950s, has a star-making small role as Calhern's childlike mistress. An even bigger break that year came in All About Eve.

The Asphalt Jungle was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor (Jaffe), Best Director, Best Screenplay (Ben Maddow, John Huston), and Best Black and White Cinematography (Harold Rosson). The film was swept in the first three categories by All About Eve, while The Third Man took the latter Oscar.