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The Big Heat
1953 89m Passed
Crime
,
Thriller
,
and more
7.9
94%
90%
76%
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Tough cop Dave Bannion takes on a politically powerful crime syndicate.
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Directed By
Fritz Lang
Written By
Sydney Boehm
,
William P. McGivern
Studio
Columbia Pictures
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Cast of The Big Heat
Glenn Ford
Det. Sgt. Dave Bannion
Gloria Grahame
Debby Marsh
Lee Marvin
Vince Stone
Jeanette Nolan
Bertha Duncan
Alexander Scourby
Mike Lagana
Jocelyn Brando
Katie Bannion
Peter Whitney
Tierney
Willis Bouchey
Lt. Ted Wilks
Robert Burton
Det. Gus Burke
Adam Williams
Larry Gordon
Carolyn Jones
Doris
Howard Wendell
Police Commissioner Higgins
Chris Alcaide
George Rose
Michael Granger
Hugo
Dorothy Green
Lucy Chapman
Ric Roman
Baldy
Dan Seymour
Mr. Atkins
Edith Evanson
Selma Parker
Harry Lauter
Hank O'Connell (uncredited)
Michael Ross
Segal (uncredited)
Phil Arnold
Retreat Waiter (uncredited)
Sidney Clute
Retreat Bartender (uncredited)
Michael Jeffers
Retreat Patron (uncredited)
Linda Bennett
Joyce Bannion (uncredited)
Charles Cane
Police Guard Outside Lagana Home (uncredited)
Byron Kane
Police Surgeon (uncredited)
John Close
Policeman (uncredited)
Phil Chambers
Hettrick (uncredited)
John Crawford
Al - Bannion's Brother-in-Law (uncredited)
John Doucette
Mark Reiner (uncredited)
Al Eben
Harry Shoenstein (uncredited)
Douglas Evans
Councilman Gillen (uncredited)
Fritz Ford
Sailor (uncredited)
Donald Kerr
Cabby (uncredited)
Lyle Latell
Moving Man (uncredited)
John Merton
Man (uncredited)
Celia Lovsky
Lagana's Mother in Portrait (uncredited)
Ted Stanhope
Lagana's Butler (uncredited)
Herbert Lytton
Martin (uncredited)
Mike Mahoney
Dixon (uncredited)
Laura Mason
B-Girl (uncredited)
Paul Maxey
George Fuller (uncredited)
Joseph Mell
Medical Examiner (uncredited)
Patrick Miller
Intern (uncredited)
William Murphy
Reds (uncredited)
Ezelle Poule
Mrs Tucker (uncredited)
Norma Randall
Jill (uncredited)
Robert Stevenson
Bill Rutherford (uncredited)
William Vedder
Janitor (uncredited)
The Big Heat Reviews
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
That's the beauty of Lang's moral ambidexterity. He tells the story of a heroic cop, while using it to mask another story, so much darker, beneath.
New York Times
Bosley Crowther
Mr. Lang can direct a film. He has put his mind to it, in this instance, and he has brought forth a hot one with a sting.
Chicago Tribune
John Petrakis
In many ways, Fritz Lang's The Big Heat, scripted by former crime reporter Sydney Boehm, laid the groundwork not only for "Dirty Harry," but for the whole sub-genre of 'rogue cop' films that began to surface during the Vietnam era.
Variety
William Brogdon
Ford's portrayal of the homicide sergeant is honest and packs much wallop. Lang's direction builds taut suspense, throwing unexpected, and believable, thrills at the audience.
Chicago Reader
Don Druker
Brutal, atmospheric, and exciting -- highly recommended.
Newsweek
Newsweek Staff
Most of the film's characterizations are sensibly written and played, and there is a highly effective performance by Gloria Grahame as a gangster's moll who doesn't deserve the terrible things that happen to her.
Austin Chronicle
One of Fritz Lang's very best films.
Harrison's Reports
P.S. Harrison
One of the best produced crime melodramas to have come out of Hollywood in some time. It is taut and exciting, and the direction and acting are so skillful that one is made to feel as if present at a real-life occurrence.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Eleanor Wilson
It's a tightly packed melodrama filled with a variety of unsavory characters.
Boston Globe
Marjory Adams
The action is fast, [and] the work of both Ford and Gloria Grahame... are of top excellence.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Mildred Martin
Ford has seldom been seen to better advantage than as Bannion... Miss Grahame adds another fine performance to those that already stand to her credit; while Scourby, Marvin and Adam Williams create genuinely terrifying portraits of beasts of prey.
The Nation
Manny Farber
The characters seem to be wrapped thinly around steaming amounts of vengeance, avarice, or cruelty, but Marvin and Ford make it a well-acted movie that offers interesting impressions of how a practical-minded American male operates in crises
Washington Post
Richard L. Coe
That all these things exist one has only to read the newspapers to realize, but how much easier The Big Heat makes the country's wholesale criminality to believe.
Detroit Free Press
Helen Bower
It has the kind of socko that will lies behind a good many small items in the newspapers and behind the big stories that make the evil deeds of the Medicis amateurish and simple in comparison.
Chicago Tribune
Mae Tinee
The film leans heavily on violence for effect, and especially in the last scenes, it is poorly plotted.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Myles Standish
The melodrama is clipped and taut, well played by Ford, Miss Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby and others, and often erupts with shocking impact.
Los Angeles Times
Edwin Schallert
Outside of some highly specialized touches of brutality, the picture travels old familiar highways. Wherefor only the fact that Lang was involved in The Big Heat gives it more than the ordinary distinction of a crime melodrama.
New York Daily News
Dorothy Masters
Although the studio has not gambled on slowing up the action by attempting anything profound in the way of character building, performances are so good and the settings so effective that everybody in the cast is unmistakably tagged for what he is.
Miami Herald
George Bourke
Much of this credit for a story well-told goes to Glenn Ford as the honest cop who pays a great price for his refusal to knuckleunder, and to Gloria Grahame, who scores an acting triumph again in a role of the gangster moll -- who also pays a great price.
Hartford Courant
M. Oakley Christoph
[The Big Heat] has Gloria Grahame in so amazing a performance as a gun moll that if you miss going down to see her, boy, oh boy, you are cheating yourself.
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