Breaking Point, The

Broke and with a family to support, charter-boat skipper Harry Morgan (John Garfield) makes a desperate gamble. For cash that will save his boat from creditors, he ferries gangsters to safety after a racing-track heist. But when you gamble, sometimes you lose. Tense and sinewy, The Breaking Point is a more faithful adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not than the earlier Bogart-Bacall classic. Garfield, one of the screen's great anti-heroes, makes Morgan his own in a rugged portrayal etched with anguish. Director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca), who guided Garfield to instant stardom in Four Daughters, turns the action scenes into movie dynamite, but the film's quiet final image is the one that will haunt you.

• drama