Metacritic reviews

The movie has never really been about gold but about character, and Bogart fearlessly makes Fred C. Dobbs into a pathetic, frightened, selfish man -- so sick we would be tempted to pity him, if he were not so undeserving of pity.

Like "The Searchers", this is so brilliant that the only real effect of the other versions is to make you want to watch the original again.

Mr. Huston has shaped a searching drama of the collision of civilization's vicious greeds with the instinct for self-preservation in an environment where all the barriers are down. And, by charting the moods of his prospectors after they have hit a vein of gold, he has done a superb illumination of basic characteristics in men. One might almost reckon that he has filmed an intentional comment here upon the irony of avarice in individuals and in nations today...But don't let this note of intelligence distract your attention from the fact that Mr. Huston is putting it over in a most vivid and exciting action display.

A distinguished work that will take its place in the repertory of Hollywood's great and enduring achievements.

Arguably John Huston's greatest film, this powerful study of masculinity under pressure retains its power.

One of the best things Hollywood has done since it learned to talk; and the movie can take a place, without blushing, among the best ever made.

John Huston was rarely in better form than he was directing this 1948 study of gold fever and worse obsessions among an unlikely trio of prospectors... Bogart is outstanding as the pathetic bully Fred C. Dobbs.

One of the strongest of all American movies...The picture is emotionally memorable, though - it has a powerful cumulative effect; when it's over you know you've seen something.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is as enduring a classic as has ever come out of Hollywood, and arguably among the greatest, but the film is admittedly not without its share of rough spots.

Outrageously Oscar-seeking performances like actor Huston's, coupled with director Huston's comparative conviction with action sequences, work against any yearning for significance. There's a quite enjoyable yarn buried under the hollow laughter.