The defence The Adrenaline Seeker
“It owes the canon nothing.”
The movie pursues immediacy and audience pleasure without begging institutions to certify its worth.
Back to trending 
Beat the Devil
Adventure · Comedy · Crime · 1953
A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine.
Movie details
Beat the Devil
“They’re Out To Beat the Devil At His Own Game!”
1953 Adventure · Comedy · Crime 1h 35m
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
6.4 / 10
10.7K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
68 %
Tomatometer
TMDB
6.1 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over Beat the Devil?
For the defence
The Adrenaline Seeker
“If it slows down, you check your phone.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Auteur Devotee
“You watch the director, not the movie.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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Lift
Action · 2024
An international heist crew, led by Cyrus Whitaker, race to lift $500 million in gold from a passenger plane at 40,000 feet.
How to Rob a Bank
Action · 2007
Caught in the middle of a bank robbery, a slacker and a bank employee become the ones who arbitrate the intense situation.
Travels with My Aunt
Adventure · 1972
At his mother's funeral, stuffy bank clerk Henry Pulling meets his Aunt Augusta, an elderly eccentric with more-than-shady dealings who pulls him along on a whirlwind adventure as she attempts to rescue an old lover.
Swashbuckler
Adventure · 1976
A pirate and a hot-tempered noblewoman join forces to protect Jamaica from a tyrant.
The Comeback Trail
Comedy · 2020
Two movie producers who owe money to the mob set up their aging movie star for an insurance scam to try and save themselves. But they wind up getting more than they ever imagined.
Wrong Cops
Crime · 2013
A group of bad cops look to dispose of a body that one of them accidentally shot.
After the Fox
Crime · 1966
A criminal mastermind sets up a phony film production as part of a plan to smuggle stolen gold.
The Hustle
Comedy · 2019
Two female scam artists, one low rent and the other high class, compete to swindle a naïve tech prodigy out of his fortune. A remake of the 1988 comedy "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."
Fun with Dick and Jane
Comedy · 2005
After Dick Harper loses his job at Globodyne in an Enron-esque collapse, he and his wife, Jane, turn to crime in order to handle the massive debt they now face. Two intelligent people, Dick and Jane actually get pretty good at robbing people and even enjoy it – but they have second thoughts when they're reminded that crime can hurt innocent people. When the couple hears that Globodyne boss Jack McCallister actually swindled the company, they plot revenge.
Where it lives
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Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
John Huston
Written by
Truman Capote · John Huston
Humphrey Bogart
Billy Dannreuther
Jennifer Jones
Gwendolen Chelm
Gina Lollobrigida
Maria Dannreuther
Robert Morley
Peterson
Peter Lorre
Julius O'Hara
Edward Underdown
Harry Chelm
Ivor Barnard
Maj. Jack Ross
Court is in session
Put Beat the Devil on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Auteur Devotee
“Easy pleasure, short half-life.”
It moves efficiently through the moment but offers little reason to keep arguing once the credits end.