Dan nominated the brutal and violent 1953 Fritz Lang film noir THE BIG HEAT starring Glenn Ford for us to watch and I’ll admit to being slightly less than enthusiastic when he did. How wrong I was. When Police Chief Tom Duncan dies by suicide, hardboiled Sergeant Bannion finds himself waging a one-man war with gangsters Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and Vince Stone (Lee Marvin) as well as the corrupt political establishment in this searing pulpy revenge thriller.
As better reviewers than us have noted, including Roger Ebert who loved this movie, Bannion's almost pathologicial pursuit of justice comes at a high cost, borne principally by the female characters: Bertha Duncan (Jeanette Nolan), the manipulative Police Chief's widow who is shot and killed, Lucy Chapman the unlucky potential witness, beaten, tortured and killed, Bannion's wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando) fated to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (and killed) and the superb Gloria Grahame as the disfigured femme fatale Debby (who is killed).
Subversive even by todays standards with a scorching script, sharp dialogue and moody visuals, this is one to check out and recommended even to those who would normally avoid this kind of thing.
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