★★★★★As a guy, I found a lot going on here to like. It’s man against nature, man against man, team dynamics, and struggle to achieve. It’s a guy’s flic for sure.
I like the scope of the movie a lot too. It’s operatic in dealing with grand issues with big stakes, only the film expresses these issues in a quest for money rather than for love. The three men struggle against the pitiless heat and the scarcity of gold, then they struggle against ruthless bandits and claim jumpers. And against their human distrust of each other. In Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the mother allusion notwithstanding, a man’s life is struggle with the ever-present risk of failure and death. In that respect, the film reminds me of Sam Spade’s effort to save himself in The Maltese Falcon in a world with similar hazards and stakes.
The men here cope with this life with varying degrees of success. Bogart’s Dobbs cracks under the strain of their work and his paranoid greed, and he becomes a danger to his partners before the evil in the world ultimately catches up with him. The claim jumper tries to leverage himself into the group but is killed, ironically as he is finally on the cusp of making it. On the other hand, Howard and Curtin survive and maintain their humanity despite the many blows that life deals them. One of my favorite moments in the film is theirs, in fact. After they’ve discovered that their gold has been blown away by the wind, the two men break into a loud, existential laugh, finding humor the only way to deal with the black irony that all their struggles have faced this ultimate frustration. And both then head off for love and integration into community: Howard goes back to the Indians who have adopted him, and Curtin goes to find the widow of the claim jumper. Our only consolation in a world dominated by force, purposelessness, irony and death is in finding love. Huston goes a step beyond The Maltese Falcon here by giving existential man at least the possibility of a way out.
Characters and plot aside, I haven’t noticed a similar visual style in Huston’s work so far. There is some nice composition both within the frame and with characters moving through cacti and plant fronds, but there’s not a strong visual trend I’ve noticed so far. But even without a consistent compositional approach or tendency in camera movement , I still enjoy watching Huston films. And it’s easy to see why Treasure of the Sierra Madre is considered such a classic. 
