The Big Heat (1953) - Updated

The Big Heat is not a Noir where the darkness comes from the shadowy visuals, but from within its characters themselves. In fact, some of these individuals are so subtle in their corruption that it easily gets overshadowed. Homicide cop Dave Bannion is ironically the straight-arrow trying to do what is right and he becomes the most vengeful character in Fritz Lang's film. It's a subversion of the typical noir arc, because his greatest help ultimately comes from the former femme fatale. That's not how it's supposed to happen, but then again a lot of things happen a little differently in The Big Heat.

The film opens and within a second a man has shot himself and left a confession his desk. The cues tell us that he's a cop and he's just committed suicide. His wife comes down stairs strangely composed and shuffles through the pages he has written. She goes to the phone, not to call the police, but she talks to a third party. We quickly forget what's she's done, but the fact is Mrs. Duncan represents the corruption that reigns supreme in this film. She's used a juicy piece of blackmail to receive large payoffs from someone and she's not the only sellout.

Bannion (Glen Ford) is a cop by day and  a family man at night with a loving wife and a beautiful little girl. By convention he is supposed to be the moral compass of this film -- the emblem of good versus evil. He takes on the straightforward case of officer Duncan's death, but it gets convoluted when a B girl named Lucy Chapman calls him up to say she knew the deceased and he would never kill himself. Initially Bannion, like us originally, takes little heed of this girl because she is hardly as respectable as Mrs. Duncan or so society says.

He gets pressure from his superior Wilks to lay off, but Bannion is discontent with lose ends especially when he receives news that the Chapman girl has been brutally murdered. This can't all be all coincidence and he begins sniffing out the truth like a bloodhound. Bannion leads us into the home of this empire of crime literally. He confronts local businessman/crime boss Mike Laganna, who he accuses of involvement in the corruption. Things are beginning to heat up and they begin to infiltrate the sanctity of his home life. The dark recesses of the noir world can never be subdued and Bannion dives deeper into the labyrinth that is created by his own obsessive vendetta. He has no tolerance for his colleagues who don't take a stand in favor of a pension. He can't stand tight-lipped locals who give him no help and most of all he hates Laganna's guts.

At the local shady nightclub The Retreat Bannion has his first run-in with the hired thug Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). Afterwards Vince's girl Debby is genuinely impressed by Bannion's methods, but he will not give her the time of day. He expects her to be the same superficially ditsy dame that we have all seen before. Hardly a femme fatale, but still there is the potential to be deadly. The one character who seems to conform to the stereotype is Stone, and yet he is even more brutal than most burning girls with cigarette butts and splashing scalding coffee on Debby's face.

Bannion gets to one of the other hired guns Larry and both Stone and Laganna decide that something must be done to stop Bannion in his tracks. The obvious target is his little girl, but this time the family life prevails over the noir world. His family and colleagues rally around him and yet Bannion is not done with his obsession.

In fact, it is Debby who actually finishes off Bannion's work by paying a visit to Mrs. Chapman and then too Vince to pay her respects. Bannion arrives soon after to reprimand Vince, but Debby has already done the dirty work. The nightmare is over and everything that is good and right comes to the forefront. Debby proves her allegiance, the criminals are put away and Bannion gets a new position with homicide. But underlying this seemingly happy ending is still a sense of tension. The film ends as Bannion heads out on a new homicide case with the cycle continuing and it seems like he will never be free of it. The world will continue ripping away the ones he loves before he is left with only his personal vengeance to drive his future. Bannion very easily could cross the line between righteousness and corruption. He already almost strangled two characters and was not opposed to slugging it out with others. It's only a matter of time before he totally blows his cool and collected cover. It's a dark assumption, but then again that is a lot of what film-noir is. Fritz Lang seems to get this and that's what makes his characters here so powerful, because he knows that the root of all evil can be in everyone.

4.5/5 Stars

Point Blank (1967)

John Boorman and Lee Marvin came together as equal parts in this venture called Point Blank and it's quite something. You can call it neo-noir, you can call it a revenge story, a crime film, but nothing quite sums up what you end up with.

It's a brutal, stark, psychedelic trip at times that never falters to any level of convention that we are used to. You have the clip clop of shoes on the concrete. Solemn, self-assured, repeating and ultimately deadly. There's a man named Walker (Lee Marvin) on a seething rampage. He personally totals a car with the victim inside scared out of his wits. He's shooting up victims all across kingdom come. Watching, waiting, then acting.

Point Blank is full of repetitive, reverberating sounds and images. Time too is repeating and devolving; fractured shards of the past followed by the present. It does not always line up or add up. Walker's past is being fed to us through his own memories.

We get to pick up the pieces as he pushes forward on his vendetta. His wife is dead and he is after a man named Mal Reese, who double crossed him, stole some of his money and his girl. But the hunt doesn't end with Reese. That would make too much sense and it would be too easy. Walker keeps going. Keeps hunting until it leads him to the next man and then the next. He gets together with the older sister (Angie Dickinson) of his wife Lynne (Sharon Acker). She the repetition of Lynne who is now dead just as each one of these targets is the new Reese.

There's a point where we must beg the question? What does Walker even want now if all he gets is $93,000? What is going on in this world. Why does it tick in such a way, because to be honest it doesn't always add up? Is the Alcatraz we see and then the L.A. landscape true reality or is this a dream that Walker has created so he can act out his revenge? After all he was shot right? It might be a long shot, but the plan of Walker in itself is a long shot. He just completes pushing on and the hunt leads him back where he was in a perfect circle.

Now what? Reese is gone. Lynne is gone. Every single middle man is gone. He has a load of money laying out at Alcatraz for him and perhaps Chris is stilling waiting for him. We don't know. That's where Point Blank finds its conclusion and its just as vague as where we jumped off.

It's understandable that it has gained a cult status over the years because Lee Marvin is an uber-cool gunman and his journey is hard to figure. His world is a bleak cityscape of 1960s L.A. and S.F. We can never hope to fully understand him or this world either and that's the beauty of Point Blank. There is a degree of ambiguity that is fascinating. Heck, we don't even know this man's first name and yet we invest time in his story. I want to see Point Blink again, because it's not just your typical shoot 'em up action film. It makes you think and it has such a cool aurora and style. It deserves another viewing at some point soon.

4/5 Stars