The Asphalt Jungle is the big daddy of big caper movies and for Melville was the ne plus ultra of cinema. It is a brilliant, chilling thriller whose criminal anti-heroes plan and execute a million-dollar jewel heist. A haunting urban jungle, from seedy dive to unattainable penthouse, as well as a central sequence that describes the heist with documentary-like precision, earned the film its critical tag: "American neorealism." Sam Jaffe as Doc, the little German genius who masterminds the robbery and then falls prey to his own gluttony; Sterling Hayden as a small-time hoodlum, and Louis Calhern as a big-time lawyer, contribute to a disquieting portrait of the new urban citizenry: hoods in three-piece suits who are every bit as greedy, and ultimately as weak, as the western bums who sought the Treasure of the Sierra Madre two years earlier.