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

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

| 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

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

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.

| Apr 10, 2024

The Big Heat, in spite of its pulp fiction earmarks, is a pretty engrossing crime movie.

| Apr 10, 2024

It's a tightly packed melodrama filled with a variety of unsavory characters.

| Apr 10, 2024

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.

| Apr 10, 2024

The film leans heavily on violence for effect, and especially in the last scenes, it is poorly plotted.

| Apr 10, 2024

About the opening sequence of The Big Heat, there is a smoothness, a fluency of expression that grips the imagination. It reflects the intensely personal style of the film's director, Fritz Lang.

| Mar 28, 2024

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.

| Mar 28, 2024

An efficient and exceptionally brutal thriller.

| Jan 3, 2018

The film is drum-tight, directed with muscular clarity and force.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 24, 2017

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.

| Apr 9, 2008

Brutal, atmospheric, and exciting -- highly recommended.

| Apr 9, 2008

Lang strips down William P McGivern's novel to essentials, giving the story a narrative drive as efficient and powerful as a handgun.

| Jun 24, 2006

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.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 20, 2006

One of Fritz Lang's very best films.

| Oct 1, 2003