A brutal bit of film noir.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 21, 2024

The Big Heat is a pessimistic, mordacious, even feral film in the late style of the great director...

| Jul 4, 2024

Above all, it is directed with a dramatic incisiveness, a sharp-edged observation that keeps the pitch of interest and excitement continuously high.

| Apr 11, 2024

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.

| Apr 11, 2024

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.

| Apr 11, 2024

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.

| Apr 11, 2024

[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.

| Apr 11, 2024

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

| Apr 11, 2024

Columbia Pictures has brought a truly big league story to the screen, with some of the most creditable casting we've ever seen... The Big Heat is a "sleeper" in every sense of the word. Don't miss It!

| Apr 11, 2024

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.

| Apr 11, 2024

The action is fast, [and] the work of both Ford and Gloria Grahame... are of top excellence.

| Apr 11, 2024

The Big Heat keeps moving from start to finish. There are no lags in the action, but curiously, almost no suspense.... There's an impersonal newspaper reportorial style about it which makes it temporarily believable.

| Apr 11, 2024

All the characters are pretty vivid, especially Gloria Grahame as the shady lady, and all benefit from situations stressing realism rather than the usual heroics. A really swift ride from start to finish.

| Apr 11, 2024

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.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 11, 2024

Fritz Lang, a masterful crime violence and mob-psychology specialist for a couple of decades (M and Fury), gives his sure timing to the ambushing, skull-cracking and assorted shooting.

| Apr 11, 2024

The Big Heat is a pretty rough cinematic journey, but for those who like this kind of going the film, packs a big, brutal wallop.

| Apr 11, 2024

The melodrama is clipped and taut, well played by Ford, Miss Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby and others, and often erupts with shocking impact.

| Apr 11, 2024

The Big Heat commands attention, deserves plaudits... The picture matches the rootin tootin' West in gunfire and excitement, although the setting is a sophisticated city where any thing can and does happen.

| Apr 10, 2024

The Big Heat covers familiar ground, it is true, but with a sharp eye to every value that makes a movie something special.

| Apr 10, 2024

When I say this is an adult film -- I mean it -- and no nonsense! It's a biting drama about the evils of civic corruption with gangsterdom and law enforcement agencies contriving in unholy political wedlock to fleece and intimidate the public.

| Apr 10, 2024