Metacritic reviews

Even with the dazzling camera work and notable cameos, the film's true marquee attraction is Bogart delivering another classic performance in the face of tragic personal circumstances.

It's a brutal and disagreeable story, probably a little far-fetched, and without Mr. Schulberg's warmest character—the wistful widow who bestowed her favors on busted pugs. But with all the arcana of the fight game that Mr. Yordan and Mr. Robson have put into it—along with their bruising, brutish fight scenes—it makes for a lively, stinging film.

The movie, directed by Mark Robson and based on a novel by Budd Schulberg, packs the ambient violence of a sports world and a media scene that are infested with gangsters; it’s an exposé not just of boxing but of the American way of business.

Budd Schulberg's vehement novel about the fight racket is given a strong pictorial going-over in The Harder They Fall. It's main-event stuff.

A raw, blood-soaked glare into the seedy underworld of sport, with terrific performances by two of Hollywood's heavyweights.

This isn't Bogart's best film, although it's a very fine one. It does, however, contain by far his best performance, making it a fitting send-off as his last outing under the bright studio lights.

Nothing about it is pretty, with director Mark Robson (who'd already helmed the powerful CHAMPION) moving the story along at a frenetic pace and Burnett Guffey's stark black-and-white photography lending a grim feel to the movie. All of the performers are excellent, especially Bogart, in what would be his final screen appearance.

Humphrey Bogart went out with one of the best swan songs a major star ever had in this anti-boxing screed, from a novel by On the Waterfront scripter Budd Schulberg. [12 Jul 2004]

Inspired by the suspect career of a prewar Italian boxer, it's rather good, but inferior to the novel by Budd Schulberg, the expert on the fight game and Oscar-winner for On the Waterfront. [04 Jan 2009, p.06]

Robson tries vainly to give the movie the look of a thriller with lots of shadows and bleak lighting, but Yordan consistently returns it to the field of melodrama by setting his drama in the home - as Bogart and his wife Sterling agonise over his job of exposing the fixed fights - rather than in the boxing ring.