Pretty brutal stuff is the best way to sum up the contents of THE BIG HEAT, easily a forerunner of two biggies that came along much later in time--L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (with its exposure of police corruption in Los Angeles) and THE BLACK DAHLIA (the same).
GLENN FORD is out for revenge when his wife is killed by the mobsters and he walks into some pretty scary situations when he tries to take justice into his own hands. JOCELYN BRANDO (Marlon's sister), who plays Ford's wife, is the unfortunate victim of a car bomb. JEANETTE NOLAN is a woman who wants to bribe the police department when she finds out some incriminating details in a letter her husband wrote before his suicide. LEE MARVIN is a brutal mobster with a pretty blonde girlfriend (GLORIA GRAHAME) who is treated so viciously by him that she decides to switch her allegiance and falls in with honest cop GLENN FORD.
It's a tight, taut, suspenseful film (with good chemistry between Ford and Grahame) that shows no mercy in dealing with several of its main characters for the sake of telling a gripping story about corruption and loyalties in the "crime does not pay" mold.
A definitive example of film noir and well worth sampling if you're a fan of this genre.
6 out of 7 found this helpful