From the opening suicide of a police sergeant, The Big Heat stays true to Fritz Lang's bleak worldview while dexterously handling the conventions of pulp detective fiction. Laconic cop Bannion (Glenn Ford) smells a rat after the sergeant's floozy is also found dead, but his corrupt superiors want him off the case. Bannion isn't one for ignoring his instincts, so he snoops a little further and targets local crime boss Lagana as the chief suspect. The result is tragedy for Bannion's family.
From this point on, The Big Heat is relentless in its portrayal of naked vengeance. Bannion becomes a proto-Dirty Harry, the archetypal maverick cop: bucking authority, brutalising witnesses, revealing nothing but disconcerting everyone with a steely glare that barely suppresses the raging pain inside him. Ford gives a masterclass performance in deadpan machismo; his Bannion is twice as hard-bitten as any of the criminals he encounters, and prefers to opt for violence over words whenever it comes to getting to the truth (he even roughs up the police sergeant's shady middle-aged widow).
Indeed, The Big Heat is a film steeped in brutality - barely a scene goes by without a violent outburst of one kind or another: dropping in on Lagana, Bannion wipes the floor with a henchman twice his size; heavy Vince Stone (Lee Marvin) stubs a cigarette out on a prostitute's hand and later throws hot coffee in his girlfriend's face. Lang offers little let-up from this barbarism: the setting may be different, but as with his earlier masterpiece, M (1931), the dark world of The Big Heat thrives on menace and intimidation, on revenge and retribution.
Lang's landmark film noir thriller is also his most celebrated American film. It's a violent tale of corruption, vengeance, and loss in which Glenn Ford plays an unscrupulous cop on the trail of a vicious gang. When his wife is killed by an explosive meant for him, he teams up with a gangster's spurned moll to deliver justice if he can.
