The best crook film that's ever been made. Certainly it's the best I've ever seen. Because of brilliant casting, acting and direction it does what every thriller should do: thrills you genuinely and tremendously from start to finish.

The story is strong of itself with an unusual ending and fine acting, but it is the treatment which makes it the best thriller so far this year.

It is (and this is rare in American films) a work of entertainment that is yet so skillfully constructed that after many years and many viewings it has the same brittle explosiveness -- and even some of the same surprise -- that it had in its first run.

A rapid-fire mystery that birthed a vast amount of film noir tropes and countless imitators, The Maltese Falcon remains as thrilling and engaging as it must have been eight decades ago.