daleholmgren
Fritz Lang was at his zenith here, sucking the viewer in to Glenn Ford's rage against the corrupt cops and politicians he works for. Ford's seething anger virtually jumps off the screen. Gloria Grahame in probably her greatest role. Each scene raises the tension level masterfully. This is what Hollywood movies are all about.
Greg Helton
The world this movie presents is like a five year old's understanding of the world. Bad guys have paintings of their mothers on the wall. The married couple come across like they're in a margarine commercial. Seasoned cops hear a rumor and twist it into something completely unrelated. Lee Marvin is not believable as a nervous coward when confronted by Glenn Ford. There's a good scene with veteran actor Peter Whitney as the bartender.
Edgar Allan Pooh
. . . Today's viewers are bound to conclude after checking out things in a typical totally corrupt American city during THE BIG HEAT. Sure, this city's Police Commissioner is in cahoots with every whim and command coming to him from the murderous thieving crime lord character "Mike Lagana," but at least "Commissioner Higgins" is NOT a U.S. President taking orders from the murderous thieving Russian Red Commie KGB Chief. Sure, THE BIG HEAT's crusading do-gooder police sergeant character "Dave Bannion" gets peeved when one of his Police Commissioner's fellow mob henchmen blows up Mrs. Bannion with a car bomb, but at least he's not fighting a master crook who looted $1 TRILLION from the Russian Treasury, and then began to rub out his critics throughout the world with War Crime nerve agents, secure in the knowledge that Fortress America had been defanged and neutered, reduced to the mute fearful silence of the "See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Say no Evil" simian figurines. Therefore, if YOU want to spend 90 minutes with something more positive than Real Life as we know it Today, check out THE BIG HEAT.
Ross622
Fritz Lang's The Big Heat is among the best noir movies ever made, and unlike any noir movie that I have ever seen before in my entire life. As the movie opens we see a corrupt cop commit suicide and then within a few seconds his wife comes downstairs to see what had happened and she finds her husband on his desk with a pistol in his hand and calls the police. Thee movie stars Glenn Ford as Police Detective Sergeant Dave Bannion the man who is in charge of this investigation of the apparent suicide, then within a few days Bannion is ordered to stop asking the wife of the dead cop questions about her husband. While trying so hard to crack this case right open he continues persistently until an explosion in his car happens for him ended up killing his wife (played by Jocelyn Brando, who was the sister of Marlon Brando) instead. Then Bannion permanently resigns from the police force and finds out that all of this was planned by the mob underworld led by Mike Lagana (played by Alexander Scourby) as well as his abusive henchman Vince Stone (played by Lee Marvin), then when Vince's wife Debby Marsh (played by Gloria Grahame) Vince then disfigures half of her face with hot coffee, and then Debby is more than ready for payback by telling Bannion all about Vince and all his other mob friends and what they did all along and the cop suicide case was a cover up. Theis movie compares to classics in it's genre such as Touch of Evil (1958), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Big Sleep, and some of Alfred Hitchcock's best films. What a great film this was.
AD
