The African Queen (1951)

16 October 2021

Starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, the African Queen feels like a distant cousin to Jungle Cruise, and for a couple reasons - it has a snarky male lead that questions the female lead's ability to handle a boat in the jungle; the intelligent female lead driving the story and learning seafaring while at it. There were also Germans! And a brother that came along (er, not for long in this film).

This film was directed by John Huston, who worked with Bogart for many films but has a lot of screenwriting credit on his own right, including this, The Maltese Falcon (1941), and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

In any case, this was about Bogart and Hepburn's characters getting along and trying to destroy a German vessel with handmade torpedoes. Arguably Bogart around his peak, and Hepburn around her resurgence, it's a good film - not my favorite of any of theirs - but I enjoyed it and it packed a lot into it's only 105m runtime. 7/10