FILM REVIEW OF "TAKERS" (2010)

“Lockdown” director John Luessenhop’s super-charged, criminal heist thriller “Takers” (*** out of ****) derives its premise and some of its best scenes from other top-flight Hollywood cops and robbers movies. First, “Takers” is set in Los Angeles where Michael Mann made his 1995 classic heist thriller “Heat” with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Val Kilmer. In “Takers,” a quintet of GQ criminals steals what they want when they want it with the least amount of damage. Thoroughly professional to the hilt, these guys live by a code. Second, although clearly inspired by the slickly done Michael Mann epic, Luessenhop helms this stylist thriller as if he spent his every waking hour watching William Friedkin’s landmark “To Live and Die in L.A.” Clocking in at 107 minutes, “Takers” never sacrifices its momentum for anything. Luessenhop’s editor, Armen Minasian of “RoboCop 2” and “Kiss the Girls,” literally slashes the action together. Something is constantly happening. Walk out on this nail-biter and you’ll miss a lot of action even if you’re gone for less than 60 seconds. Luessenhop pares everything down to the bare essentials. Indeed, Zoe Saldana's role looks like it was whittled down to a couple of scenes with little for her to do. Unfortunately, characterization beyond wardrobe changes suffers. Nevertheless, the action burns up the screen, particularly a nimble foot chase that imitates a similar chase from the first Daniel Craig Bond movie “Casino Royale.” Third, Luessenhop stages a noisy but realistic gunfight in the confines of a motel suite that looks like a tribute to Ridley Scott’s L.A.-based crime caper “True Romance.” Mind you, “Takers” ups the ante; the bullets punch big holes in the walls in this shoot-out, and nobody knows who is blasting away at whom on the other side. Finally, a three-way, Sergio Leone/Quentin Tarantino style showdown caps the action at an airport where the cops and robbers face off. Laden with surprises, “Takers” emerges as a gripping heist thriller with enough cool-looking combat to compensate for the dearth of characterization.

Jamaican-born Gordon Jennings (Idris Elba of “Obsessed”) heads up an elite gang of twentysomething criminals that consists of former car thief John Rahway (Paul Walker of “Running Scared”), tattoo-clad, jack-of-all-trades construction engineer A.J. (Hayden Christensen of "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith”), and brothers Jake (Michael Ealy of “Seven Pounds”) and Jesse Attica (Chris Brown of “Stomp the Yard”) who handle C-4 explosives like wizards. During the first scene, Luessenhop establishes the cool expertise of Jennings and company under tension when they execute a flawlessly timed robbery at the Federal California Bank in broad daylight in downtown Los Angeles. They assemble at the high-rise bank in separate disguises and then suit up in masks and body armor with assault weapons. A female bank employee trips a bank alarm during the hold-up. Calmly, Rahway escorts her courteously to a nearby phone where he orders her to call a local TV station and report a robbery in progress. Naturally, an eager TV news crew responds and lands their news helicopter atop the skyscraper helipad where the bank is located. The news reporter believes she has a scoop when the security guard gives them clearance to land. As it turns out, A.J. is masquerading as the security guard. He pulls his pistol and forces her, her news camera man, and the pilot down on their bellies. While the Los Angeles Police Department assembles in the parking lot, the other four members of his team pile into the chopper. A.J. flies the chopper off to a landing site not far away. After blowing up the helicopter to destroy any clues, the quintet separate without anyone knowing anything about them. These guys live the high life and toast each other at Jake’s bar.

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing because one of their former colleagues, Daryl Rivers (rapper-producer Tip "T.I." Harris), who was wounded during a robbery four years ago, is released on good behavior. The gang has since cut off contact with Daryl, a.k.a. ‘Ghost,’ and they are surprised when he shows up at Jake’s bar. As it turns out, Ghost’s girlfriend Rachel Jansen (Zoe Saldana of “The Losers”) has taken up with Jake, so bad blood exists between Jake and Ghost. Gordon and the others fear that after they give Ghost his cut from his last job that he may inform on them to the authorities. Instead, Ghost brings them the blueprints for a daring armored car robbery that could yield a $20-$30 million payday. Initially, the gang is suspicious. They don’t know if they can trust Ghost, but he brings them a sweet deal. The chief drawback is they must stage the heist in less than a week. A.J. performs the leg work and convinces Gordon that the job is something that they can do. Little do they know that Ghost has gotten the idea from an outfit of ruthless L.A. based Russians. The Russians think they are in cahoots with Ghost, but Ghosts plans to use them as a means of exacting sweet revenge on the protagonists. The armored car robbery in “Takers” is truly a piece of work and nothing like it has been done.

Director John Luessenhop and a trio of scenarists, Peter Allen, Gabriel Casseus, and Avery Duff, have turned an inventory of cop and robbers clichés into a lively little thriller. Although the slippery Ghost is the gang’s most obvious adversary, they have to elude and distract hot-tempered, rogue L.A.P.D. Detective Jack Welles (Matt Dillon of “Armored”) who is determined to capture them. Welles and his partner Eddie Hatcher (Jay Hernandez of “Hostel”) are tenacious in their efforts to track down Gordon and company. Like “Heat,” the heroes in “Takers” have personal problems. Gordon has a crack head sister, Naomi (Marianne Jean-Baptiste of “Spy Game”), who creates problems for him when he least needs them. Luessenhop ramps up the suspense and tension throughout “Takers” so that neither the cops nor the robbers have an easy time of it. Complications galore arise to derail everybody’s best laid plans. “Takers” ranks as one of the best L.A.-based heist melodramas since “Heat.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''STREETFIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI" (2009)

This above-average distaff martial arts actioneer about a daughter’s revenge for the murder of her long-suffering father boasts Geoff Boyle’s spectacular cinematography and a sturdy cast, particularly with charismatic Neal McDonough as the dastardly chief villain and Michael Clarke Duncan as his right-hand man. Martial arts fight choreographer Dion Lam of “Exit Wounds” and “The Matrix Reloaded” stages several exceptional hand-to-hand combat scenes involving wire work. As the heroine Kristia Kreuk is convincing here as Chin-Li and handles herself well in the fight sequences. She possesses an expressive countenance,and this gives "Streetfighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" (*** out of ****) its heart and drive. Moreover, as Chin-Li, our heroine changes over the course of the story so that she emerges as a round rather than a flat character. “Exit Wounds” director Andrej Bartkowiak never lets the action stall out during its trim 96 minutes. Of course, the Justin Marks screenplay contains nothing but formula with the usual expository scenes for an origins story. A heroic heroine, ruthless villains, scenic locales, and a by-the-numbers crime empire building plot keep thing warm but rarely sizzling. Ostensibly, “Streetfighter” is a sequel to the Jean Claude Van Damme original.

The movie begins as an origins story with Chun-Li (Kristia Kreuk) talking about her youth in San Francisco. Her international businessman father Xiang (Edmund Chen of “Saigon Eclipse”) wants her to become a concert pianist. Eventually, the family relocates to Hong Kong, and her father teaches her Wushu while she practices the piano. Suddenly, one evening, criminals invade her house, and Xiang battles them until Balrog seizes young Chun-Lie and threatens to kill her. Bison (Neal McDonough of “Walking Tall”) and his men abduct Xiang. Later, Bison appropriates the Shadaloo Empire, the biggest crime syndicate in Asia. He has acquired his power and authority by having his assassin, Vega (Jaime Luis Gomez) decapitated the heads of all the crime lords in Bangkok. Bison has a grand scheme to lower property values in the Bangkok slums, buy up as much as he can, tear it down, and then rebuild it with luxurious housing for the affluent. Bison has no qualms about killing. He abducted Chin-Li’s father years ago and when she comes to Bangkok to straighten things out, Bison murders her father in front of her eyes. Previously, Bison had held Chun-Li's father captive for years and forced against his will to help develop his infamous plan.

Meanwhile, Interpol agent Charlie Nash (Chris Klein of “American Pie”) has pursued the elusive Bison through eleven major cities on four continents and only now comes close to catching him. He teams up with Bangkok Police Detective Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood of “Terminator: Salvation”) in the Gang & Homicide Division. While this is going on, Chun Lin is building a reputation as a successful concert pianist when she learns that her mother is ill. Eventually, Chun Li’s mother dies. The mother was an American and her father was Asian. Chun discovers a scroll in ancient Chinese. She looks for help in translating the document which she suspects will have something to do with her life. Our heroine takes the scroll with her and checks it out with her. The old lady observes, “This is not a letter, it is a light shining only upon you.” She advises Chun Li to travel to Bangkok and search for a man named Gen. Before she locates (Robin Shou of “Mortal Combat”) who gives her a brush course in defying gravity while decimating the dastards, Chun-Li lives in the streets, observes the crime-ridden slums first hand, and later interferes with a gang intent on beating up a helpless man. Principally, Gen shows Chun how to control her rage in a fight.

Not only does “Streetfighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” relate the story of our heroine’s humble beginnings, but the film also details the origins of the cruel villain. Son of Irish missionaries, Bison grew up as an orphan and stole fish from people in Thailand. Just to emphasize his evil, Bartkowiak and Marks show how Bison jettisoned his conscience. He does this by removing his infant daughter from his wife’s womb prematurely, killing his wife. This transferred his conscience into his daughter. Again, Bison is a first-rate bastard. Later, Bison’s thugs attack Gen while Chun-Li is away buying groceries and Balrog destroys Gen’s house with a RPG. Bison orders Vega to finish off Chun-Li, but he is surprised when Chun-Li whips Vega in a knock down, drag out fight, leaves the assassin hanging upside down over the side of a building. Chun-Li heads out to deal with Bison. She learns about a secret delivery of White Rose and determines to help Charlie Nash and Detective Sunee get Bison. Bison’s tentacles stretch to the police and Sunee is told to drop the case. Consequently, Charlie and Chun-Li take on Bison. The fight between Bison and Chun-Li is energetic and the outcome is nothing if not impressive.

Indeed, the producers tampered with the video game when they adapted it to the big-screen. For example, they removed the gloves that Balrog wore. Furthermore, they changed Chun-Li from strictly Chinese to Chinese-American. Producer Ashok Amritraj wanted the film “to stand on its own, not just for the gaming audience, but also as a movie.” “Streetfighter: The Legion of Chun-Li” with its formulaic plot doesn’t rank as a great martial arts film, but it is a good, exciting, action-packed saga with a surprise or two to keep you on your toes. As much as I like Jean Claude Van Damme’s “Streetfighter” (1994), “Streetfighter: The Legion of Chun-Li” tops the JCVD movie in every respect.

FILM REVIEW OF ''FACE/OFF" (1997)

No, surgeons cannot carve your face off and graft it onto somebody else like they do to John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in “Face/Off,” a provocative, high-voltage crime thriller. Surgeons may eventually perfect this operation, but for now it is impossible. Just because real surgeons cannot cut off faces and slap them onto other people, however, need not deter their ersatz Hollywood counterparts. Face swapping makes for an audacious movie premise, especially when it plays a key part in the razzle-dazzle, bullet-riddled duel of champions from celebrated Hong Kong action helmer John Woo. If you’ve seen the Jean-Claude Van Damme thriller “Hard Target” or the previous Travolta epic “Broken Arrow,” you’ve been Woo-ed. If you’ve never rented Woo’s super-charged video classics, such as “The Killer,” “A Better Tomorrow,” and “Hard Boiled,” you’ve missed some of the coolest thrillers since “Miami Vice” left the airwaves.

Nicolas Cage is cast as the insanely evil terrorist Castor Troy. Troy shoots Federal Agent Sean Archer (John Travolta of “Broken Arrow”), but his bullet passes through Archer and kills Archer’s young son Michael. Archer has made it his crusade to capture Castor Troy. Six year later, Archer catches up with him. Castor has just planted a bomb with a plague that’s “a tad worse than Gulf War Syndrome.” Before Castor can fly away, a task force of choppers, cars, and SWAT sharpshooters converge on the airport. This scene evokes memories of the Bond movie “License to Kill.” Like the Bond villain, Castor finds his jet stopped and the Feds swarming over it. He manages to kill a few before he is trapped in the deadly draft of a wind tunnel.

Everybody cheers Sean Archer. Castor lies in a coma, while his brother Pollux Troy (Alessandro Nivola in an effective performance) rots in prison. When the Feds inspect Troy’s plane, they discover a computer disc and learn about a dedly bomb. Just when Archer thought it was safe to cross the street, BOOM! An initial dragnet of Castor’s accomplices yields a date, but Pollus refuses to talk. At least to anyone other than his brother Castor. That’s when a black bag, super-secret operation is mounted. Hollis Miller (CCH Pounders of “RoboCop 3”) persuades Archer to swap mugs with Troy. With the specter of a devastating plague in L.A., Archer consent to their harebrained scheme.

The ingenious Mike Werb and Michael Colleary screenplay piles on absurdities galore with the same reckless abandon that some fast food restaurants heap on the lettuce, pickles, and tomatoes. “Face/Off” (***1/2 out of ****) spins itself off of the well worn plot when the good guy has to go so deep undercover that the only people who can help him are the first ones who the villains slay. If you’ve seen Burt Reynolds in Joseph Sargent’s “White Lightning” (1973), or Paul Newman in John Huston’s “The MacKintosh Man” (1973), or Johnny Depp in the recent Al Pacino caper “Donnie Brasco,” you know the plot basics. “Face/Off” is an unbelievable thriller that dresses itself up with realism. Even if half of the stuff in “Face/Off” couldn’t happen, director John Woo stages it so that it looks not only pictorially possible but visually splendid. The idea that John Travolta and Nicolas Cage can swap bodies is hokum of a clever but far-fetched nature. So the moviemakers rely on the indulgence of the audience. Of course, Travolta cannot become anything like Cage. But it’s fun to see how their characters change in this out-of-body experience. And the moviemakers go a step further when they include a surgical scene that is an homage to those old Hammer horror movies when Dr. Frankenstein dunked everything in a fish tank!

If you like movies where the heroes spend a lot of time trading shots with each other, “Face/Off” should be the right caliber for you. The arsenal of weapons is impressive; especially Castor Troy’s matched brace of gold-plated automatic pistols. Werb and Colleary chart the vendetta between Archer and Troy in a series of deliriously poetic shoot-outs that resemble a Sergio Leone extravaganza. You see bullets after they have been discharged leaving the barrel. Whenever it looks like it’s going to run out of plot, “Face/Off” loosens a burst or two of ammo in a gunfight. You get to see a lot of reloading close-ups. Every time a bullet hits anything, whatever it struck erupts into a fountain of shards. And then you have the cameras gliding through all of this mayhem with stunt people jerking and tumbling, shell casings flying, and guys dodging bullets. Woo surprisingly keeps blood and gore to a minimum.

The heroes and villains in “Face/Off” want to destroy each other. Archer is the straight-arrow hero and Troy is the villain. It’s a classic example of the struggle between good and evil. As villains go, Troy is mean to the marrow. He drips evil in a slinky, malignant way. He revels in violence for fun and profit. “Face/Off” tampers little with this image, except where Troy shows concern for his younger brother Pollux by constantly tying his shoes. When Castor gets his comeuppance, you want to cheer because he grows increasingly slimy as the plot thickens.

John Travolta alternates between jaw clenched expressions of rage and soul searching displays of agony. He allows his commitment to the law drive him beyond it. His heroism is tainted by grief for his dead son and his desire to kill Castor. This is one of Travolta’s more toxic performances, especially when he absorbs Castor’s personality.

The undersea prison in “Face/Off” is straight out of a sci-fi movie and another subtle hint about what director John Woo faced if he had remained in Hong Kong. In this prison, which is constructed of steel, the convicts wear steel boots. When a riot breaks out, the guards magnetize the convicts’ boots and zap them with cattle prods. The symbolism of “Face/Off” is fundamental. Woo shows us that there is a little good and evil in us all. When Travolta’s Archer agonizes about the plastic surgery, he says he’s being forced to break the laws that he has been sworn to uphold. He changes more than his face literally to crush evil. He proves this when he uses Castor’s henchmen against his own FBI agents who surround Castor. The filmmakers have a field day with the face symbolism here. The Archers’ use—both husband Sean and his wife—of a hand swipe over their respective faces to restore cheer to themselves in a pre-duel showdown is an example. Castor and Archer in different bodies aim their guns at each other with only a mirror standing between them. The subtle irony that they are going to shoot the evil in the mirror that each reflects but that their bullets may kill the real source of evil on the other side is pretty heavyweight stuff for a summer Hollywood blockbuster.

The worst thing you can say about “Face/Off” is that it never knows when the break it off. There are about five ballet-like staged shoot-outs between Travolta and Cage. Each gunfight resembles pyrotechnical pistolero polkas complete with fireball explosions. Everybody sprays hail storms of lead and everything get the confetti shot out of it. As the reigning maestro of movie violence, Woo has few equals. “Face/Off” emerges as an acrobatic ode to male violence. There is a frantic boat chase with a subsequent fireball explosion, and a prison riot and their portrayal are so fanciful that you forget that you’re watching a crime thriller.

For those who demand happy endings, “Face/Off” features a happy ending. The film also contains some socially approved messages which right-wing critics will no doubt overlook. Characters in “Face/Off” who smoke cigarettes are warned that tobacco products will kill them. A little boy is reprimanded for playing with a gun. Finally, “Face/Off” bristles with that signature John Woo image that seems to be plastered over every movie rental video box: a Mexican stand-off where two guys point guns at each other. If you don’t think that John Woo’s actioneers haven’t influenced Hollywood, you should now!

FILM REVIEW OF ''MAGNUM FORCE" (1973)

Clint Eastwood reprises his role as Inspector Harry Callahan of the San Francisco Police Department in "Hang'em High" director Ted Post's "Dirty Harry" sequel "Magnum Force." The sturdy supporting cast includes Hal Holbrook, David Soul, Robert Ulrich, Tim Matheson, John Mitchum and Mitchell Ryan. The vigorous John Milius & Michael Cimino screenplay clarifies our hero's law & order ideology that he took so much flak for in the original. Indeed, "Magnum Force" whitewashes Eastwood's saintly but insubordinate cop. Remember, in "Dirty Harry," he ignored the law when he tried to save the life of a kidnapped girl, but Harry's violation of the villain's Miranda rights allowed the fiend to go free despite overwhelming evidence that he was the murderer. In "Magnum Force," we find Harry back on the job. The filmmakers never explain what precisely occurred during the interim, but it really doesn't matter. Harry is back and that is all that counts. Harry encounters a quartet of gung-ho 'young Turk' motorcycle traffic cops who are crack shots with their .357 magnum service revolvers.

"Magnum Force" opens with an angry mob of citizens protesting the release of infamous mobster Carmine Ricca (career character actor villain Richard Devon of "The Silencers") and his associates, who walk out of court, climb into their automobile and tool off to freedom despite the riotous crowd. They don't get very far before a uniformed traffic cop in black leather with a cream white helmet pulls them over for crossing the double lines on the freeway. When the thug driver gives the cop some lip, the cop—who we cannot see because he is virtually anonymous in his regalia—whips out of his service revolver and punches holes in all four of them, leaving them sprawled dead in the car. Harry investigates and his new superior, Lieutenant Neil Briggs (Hal Holbrook of "The Great White Hope") chews him out for not being on the stake-out to which he has been assigned. By this time, Harry has acquired a new partner, an African-American (Felton Perry of the original "Walking Tall") to show that he isn't a bigot. Harry takes Smith out to airport to grab a hamburger and stumbles onto a hijacking plot. Harry masquerades as an airline pilot to get aboard the jetliner and thwarts the swarthy looking hijackers with a few shots. When Harry gets back to the stake-out at a super market, he nails a couple of gun-toting bandits. Later, a pimp (Albert Popwell who played the bank robber in "Dirty Harry" that was on the receiving end of Callahan's speech) corners one of his girls at night and takes a stash of cash that she has been hording. He repays her greedy by pouring drain cleaner down her throat. The next time that we see the pimp he is being pulled over by another traffic cop. He offers the cop a bribe and the cop blows him away. prefer to take the law into their own hands and execute crooks that rely on the loopholes in justice to get out of being prosecuted from their crimes.

Ted Post isn't half of the helmer that Don Siegel was, and "Magnum Force" pales by comparison with its illustrious predecessor. First, despite the presence of some strong villains, the bad guys are rather straightforward types. Nobody is as psychotic as Andy Robinson's Scorpio in "Dirty Harry." These antagonists are well-heeled gangsters with armies of gunmen or they are slickly dressed motorcycle cops with impenetrable sunglasses that make them look intimidating. All in all, "Magnum Force" is rather conventional. Dirty Harry fans would have to wait for "Sudden Impact" before the character had another memorable speech. The closest that Milius & Cimino come to a signature line is Harry's comment: "A man has got to know his limitations." Otherwise, the dialogue is as disposable as the spent shells that Harry empties from his revolver. The shoot-outs are staged with some competence, and lenser Frank Stanley's camera-work is far about average. There is a major shoot-out between a mob and Harry. Eventually, Harry winds up on the hood of the car being driven by a hood that conveniently loses control of the vehicle and impales himself on a crane. Early in the storyline, Harry stumbles across a career cop and an old friend, Officer Charlie McCoy (Mitchell Ryan of "High Plains Drifter") who hates the system almost as much as Harry does and makes no pretense about it. Milius and Cimino use McCoy as the red herring. He appears to be the unhinged cop who has been killing thugs, that is, until he gets killed himself.

A little more than half-way through the action, the badguys identify themselves to Harry and ask him to join them. Surprisingly, for them, Harry refuses to and it's only a matter of time before he has to confront them. As it turns out, Harry's worst suspicions have come true. Vigilante cops within the SFPD are knocking off suspected criminals with extreme prejudice. Eventually, Harry has to tangle with them aboard a mothballed aircraft carrier after a brisk but uneventful car chase. The motorcycle stunts come off looking tame.

The biggest difference in "Magnum Force" from "Dirty Harry" is the relationships that Harry has with women. He had no woman in "Dirty Harry," but here we see him date an Asian-American as well as Charlie's ex-wife. Harry never gets them between the sheets because he has to respond to some criminal emergency that cannot wait for him. Interestingly, according to scenarist John Milius—in an above-average but less than satisfactorily complete commentary—revealed that Eastwood had received mail from women requesting that he work women into the movies, but that the women come onto Harry instead of vice-versa. "Magnum Force" packs a lot of heat, but it cannot compare with Don Siegel's original. Hal Holbrook makes an okay villain. John Mitchum returns as Inspector Frank DiGiorgo, the only cast member who appeared in the original "Dirty Harry."

REVIEW OF ''THE BIG HEAT'' (1953)

Tennessee Democratic Senator Carey Estes Kefauver became synonymous with the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce that convened during 1950. The Kefauver hearings took place in 14 cities, and 600 witnesses testified as a part of them. Prominent gangland figures, among them Willie Moretti, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello, appeared before the committee. Not only did these televised hearings wreck some political careers but also the hearings advanced others, such as Everett Dirksen, while the hearings publicized for the first time the idea of a criminal syndicate called 'the Mafia.' The Kefauver hearings exerted considerable influence on Hollywood, too. Revelations of organized crime’s pervasive corruption of America furnished filmmakers with fresh plots. The hearings forged an entire subgenre of crime movies about Mafia corruption in city hall, including “The Enforcer” (1951) with Kefauver appearing in a forward, “The Mob” (1951), “Kansas City Confidential” (1952), “Captive City” (1952), and “Hoodlum Empire” (1952). Fritz Lang’s “The Big Heat” (1953) concerned Mafia domination of city government and escalated the levels of brutality and violence. Afterward, movies like "Rogue Cop" (1954) about a corrupt cop (Robert Taylor) would follow in the wake of "The Big Heat."

As a tough-talking, two-fisted, homicide police sergeant bent on revenge, Glenn Ford's Sergeant David Bannion in Fritz Lang's superlative thriller "The Big Heat" served as a kind of prototype for Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" character. This seminal saga about police corruption and metropolitan crime syndicates in the fictional town of Kenport appears a little dated by today's standards with its obvious studio sets and Charles Lang's crisp black and white cinematography, but it still packs a wallop. "Mystery Street" scenarist Sidney Boehm based his screenplay on William P. McGivern's Saturday Evening Post serial. Before veteran cop Tom Duncan commits suicide, he leaves a written record of his corrupt dealings with big-time hoodlum Mike Lagana (an urbane Alexander Scourby of "Seven Thieves") for the district attorney. Duncan's greedy wife wants the payoffs to continue, however, so she blackmails Lagana for $500 a week. Sergeant Dave Bannion finds himself assigned to the case. "When a cop kills himself, they want a full report," he says to a fellow policeman at the scene of the suicide. Bannion generates a lot of hostility in getting that "full report" not only among the paranoid criminal figures but also with his superiors some of whom may or may not be on the take.

Everything comes to a head one evening when Bannion and his pretty wife Katie (Marlon's older sister Jocelyn Brando of "Ten Wanted Men") are bound for a movie. Katie commandeers their car while Dave tells their young daughter Joyce (Linda Bennett of "Creature with the Atomic Brain") a bedtime story. She is going to drive off to pick up the babysitter. Unfortunately, Katie never gets out of their driveway because several sticks of dynamite attached to the ignition explode and kill her when she starts the car. Of course, the criminals expected Dave to die in the explosion. Dave survives and sends his daughter off to live with some friends while he starts smashing heads. Mike Lagana isn't any too happy about this error. Meanwhile, Dave's superiors turn up the heat on him to cool off, but he refuses to and quits the force to take care of business. Along the way, he crosses paths with a dame, Debby Marsh (Oscar winner Gloria Grahame of "The Bad and the Beautiful"), and they chat in his motel room. Word reaches Debby's thuggish boyfriend, Vince Stone (up and coming Lee Marvin of "The Dirty Dozen") and he takes his rage out on his girl by splashing her face with scalding coffee. Earlier, Stone burned a bar girl, Doris (Carolyn Jones of TV's "The Addams Family"), with his cigarette and attracted Dave's interest.

Later, Dave has harsh words with Lagana, and our hero is forced to leave the force to complete his investigation. Dave and Debby become unlikely friends, and he confides in Debby that everything will blow up in Lagana's face if the wife of the dead cop were to release his death note. Debby visits Bertha Duncan (Jeanette Nolan of "Tribute to a Bad Man") and she has an interesting dialogue exchange with her about being 'sisters in mink' before she guns her down in cold blood as a favor to Dave. Actually, Dave turns into a rogue himself and he isn't much different from the scum that he wants to put away for the murder of his innocent, defenseless wife. Women fare horribly in "The Big Heat." Indeed, all of the women involved in the plot, with the exception of Doris, wind up dead by fade-out. . Altogether, “The Big Heat” resembles a film noir thriller, but Lang and Boehm violate one of its chief tenets. Instead of women destroying men, the opposite occurs. Bannion, who is warned by a colleague about his “hate binge,” winds up destroying four women, including his wife, in his crusade for justice.

Lang directs "The Big Heat" without any pretensions, and it is better for this treatment. He never wears out his welcome at 90 crisp, no-nonsense minutes. The coffee burning incident happens off camera. We see Marvin grab a boiling pot of coffee and Graham screams. Later, Graham returns the favor, but this time the action occurs in a semi-darkened room and we see liquid flying across a room like a serpent lashing out. The only complaint of mine is that we don't visually see Lagana suffer as a result of Bannion's investigation. Although Bannion has banished chaos and restored order by the last scene when his new superiors reinstate him, the cost has been catastrophic. Indeed, in Lang’s sadistic mise-en-scene, the hero must wipe out virtually everything—sometimes even his loved one—before peace can be regained.

Representative of several film reviews that appeared during the initial showings of "The Big Heat" is Robert Kass' review in "Catholic World: "The present vogue for sadism and violence reaches some kind of apex in "The Big Heat," a truly gruesome crime thriller in which a detective-sergeant singlehandedly battles corruption in city government controlled by a ruthless racketeer." Later, Kass adds for effect: "I wonder that someone hasn't protested about the frightening display of viciousness which must have an even greater impact on young minds. Apparently, though, sadism is not considered on a par with sex."