The Big Heat

Directed by Fritz Lang, The Big Heat follows police officer Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) as he eventually takes on a powerful crime syndicate after a prominent cop dies under suspicious circumstances. Filmmaker Lang, armed with Sydney Boehm’s screenplay, delivers an erratically-paced yet mostly compelling drama that benefits substantially from Ford’s tough-as-nails performance, as the actor does a superb job of elevating the most mundane of sequences with his often spellbinding turn as the grizzled protagonist – with Ford’s strong work certainly matched by a uniformly able roster of periphery players that includes Gloria Grahame, Alexander Scourby, and Lee Marvin. (The latter, cast as a vicious, woman-abusing gangster, is particularly entertaining and engaging here.) It’s disappointing to note, then, that The Big Heat progresses into a somewhat hit-and-miss midsection that isn’t as taut or engrossing as one might’ve hoped, with the emphasis on the storyline’s myriad of supporting characters slowly-but-surely diluting the picture’s overall effectiveness (ie it’s difficult not to wish that Lang had just focused entirely on Bannion’s vengeance-fueled antics). The movie nevertheless (and ultimately) stands as a compulsively watchable film noir that boasts impressive visuals and a smattering of electrifying moments, although it remains completely clear that Ford’s frequently mesmerizing efforts go a long way towards smoothing over the periodic bumps in the narrative.

**1/2 out of ****