One Paragraph Movie Review: The Big Heat

Fortieth film: 1953’s The Big Heat. Despite the fact that nobody said ‘broad’ or ‘dame’ the whole movie, this is as noir-homicide-detective-I-oughta-bust-ya-in-the-chops cliche brilliance as you can get. There’s gangsters (including a super-young, double-breasted Lee Marvin), gangster’s molls (“Sitting here thinking’s pretty rough when you’re used to not thinking”), crooked cops, straight cops, eight thousand cigarettes, four thousand cocktails, and a very big steak. Look, any movie that includes the line “You attack yourself on all sides like Jersey mosquitoes” is going to be amazing, and this movie — plus frocks and some actually stunning interior design — is no exception. Holy mink coats though, gunshot deaths and facial scarring have come a long way since the early 50s. Four and a bit deadly kittens with mittens out of five.