Edward G. Robinson: The Small Man Playing It Big In Key Largo

"This rain should cool things off, but it don't."

So says Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo.

Things don't cool off in Key Largo. They heat up.

The war hero returns from the battle only to discover a new fight at home. This plot convention has been used in a number of exploitation action movies, although it was arguably done best in the 1948 Humphrey Bogart/Edward G. Robinson classic.

A lot more is going on in the film that simply setting up a fight between Bogart's Frank McCloud, a war veteran, and Robinson's Johnny Rocco, a vicious gangster. Trapped in the microcosm of a hotel during a hurricane, the war hero, the innocent family, and the gangster crew, the motivations behind Rocco's evil are slowly revealed.

As the drama plays out in the hotel, we learn Rocco is a man who is driven by his own twisted ambitions and greed. The greed is not rooted in procuring huge amounts of material things, but to quell a harsh personality disorder and an inferiority complex. Bogart's character is able to battle the villain by slowly getting under his skin.

"He knows what he wants....He wants more...don't you Rocco?"

When asked if he will ever have enough, Rocco responds:

"Well, I never have....."

Bogart's McCloud reveals what he wants more than anything. "A world in which there is no place for Johnny Rocco." Ironically, when first given the chance to kill Rocco, McCloud throws a gun away not wanting to lower himself to the level of the gangster.

McCloud later makes the revelation that fighting Rocco is not his battle. He has no desire to put his life on the line to stop the gangster or get in the thug's way. McCloud has nothing but searing contempt for the gangster, but he isn't going to risk  - and likely lose - his life trying to stop Rocco.

Or will he? Perhaps McCloud simply does not want to give Rocco the satisfaction of seeing him as a "big deal". Rocco is a driven man, but he is driven by a desire for status. Criminal endeavors allow this sense of status, undeserved as it may be.

A world without people like Johnny Rocco would not be like anything found in the history of human civilization. There are always going to be petty people whose insecurities form the basis of their antisocial behavior. And Rocco's antisocial tendencies are all on display in the dramatics playing out in the hotel.

Within the microcosm of what takes place in a Key Largo, a small man like Johnny Rocco gives great insight into sociological (and sociopathic) problems in the world outside the hotel's doors.