[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]
A revolver lies on a cluttered desk. Beside it: a police badge and an envelope addressed to the district attorney’s office. A trembling hand yanks the gun out of frame. A brief pause, then: BANG! The weapon clatters back into view, clutched in the cold fist of a fresh corpse—and we’re off to the races!
The opening scene of The Big Heat is a masterclass in silent storytelling, as seductively stylish as it is lean, efficient, and economical. Without a single line of dialogue, director Fritz Lang (best known nowadays for such German expressionist magnum opuses as Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, and M) elegantly establishes the tone, themes, and conflict of the oppressively dark, cynical morality play that will soon unfold.
The rest of the movie is rather conventional in comparison, with a plot revolving around a lone virtuous cop’s uphill battle against a thoroughly corrupt system—but is he fighting for justice… or revenge? While this premise initially seems so generic that it borders on unremarkable, that familiarity can probably be attributed to the inherent bias of hindsight; indeed, Lang arguably introduced many of the classic film noir tropes that modern audiences now take for granted. Ultimately, The Big Heat features all the delicious flavors that make gumshoe detective fiction so irresistible: it’s bitter, pulpy, gritty, and hard-boiled to Hell and back.
And those unforgettable first images make for one tantalizing appetizer.
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