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The Big Heat poster

Movies that feel likeThe Big Heat (1953)

After the suspicious suicide of a fellow cop, tough homicide detective Dave Bannion takes the law into his own hands when he sets out to smash a vicious crime syndicate.

If you loved The Big Heat, the closest films we have are Fury (1936), The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945). All three share The Big Heat's gritty and atmospheric feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is The Narrow Margin (1952).

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If The Big Heat hit the spot, these will too

Fury poster
Fury
1936 Β· dir. Fritz Lang
πŸ… 95%β˜… 7.8crime Β· drama Β· thriller

Both are Fritz Lang's work, and they rhyme

The difference: Takes it somewhere less melancholy than The Big Heat does

Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.

The Woman in the Window poster
The Woman in the Window
1944 Β· dir. Fritz Lang
πŸ… 83%β˜… 7.6crime Β· drama Β· thrillerPrime Video

Fritz Lang working the same nerve twice

The difference: Easier on the relentlessness than The Big Heat

A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.

Scarlet Street poster
Scarlet Street
1945 Β· dir. Fritz Lang
πŸ… 100%β˜… 7.7drama Β· crimePrime Video

Both are built on the same subject: film noir

The difference: Sits closer to drama than The Big Heat does

Cashier and part-time starving artist Christopher Cross is absolutely smitten with the beautiful Kitty March. Kitty plays along, but she's really only interested in Johnny, a two-bit crook. When Kitty and Johnny find out that art dealers are interested in Chris's work, they con him into letting Kitty take credit for the paintings. Cross allows it because he is in love with Kitty, but his love will only let her get away with so much.

Get Carter poster
Get Carter
1971 Β· dir. Mike Hodges
πŸ… 85%β˜… 7.3crime Β· thriller

The same preoccupation in both: gangster

Jack Carter is a small-time hood working in London. When word reaches him of his brother's death, he travels to Newcastle to attend the funeral. Refusing to accept the police report of suicide, Carter seeks out his brother’s friends and acquaintances to learn who murdered his sibling and why.

Point Blank poster
Point Blank
1967 Β· dir. John Boorman
πŸ… 93%β˜… 7.2crime Β· thriller Β· drama

One thread runs through both: revenge

After being double-crossed and left for dead, a mysterious man named Walker single-mindedly tries to retrieve the rather inconsequential sum of money that was stolen from him.

Key Largo poster
Key Largo
1948 Β· dir. John Huston
πŸ… 97%β˜… 7.7crime Β· thriller

Common ground: death

A hurricane swells outside, but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up - and holds at gunpoint hotel owner James Temple, his widowed daughter-in-law Nora, and ex-GI Frank McCloud.

Out of the Past poster
Out of the Past
1947 Β· dir. Jacques Tourneur
πŸ… 87%β˜… 7.9crime Β· thriller

Both keep coming back to the same thing: gangster

The peaceful life of a gas station owner is disrupted when a man from his past arrives in town and forces him to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.

The Narrow Margin poster
The Narrow Margin
1952 Β· dir. Richard Fleischer
πŸ… 100%β˜… 7.6thriller Β· crime

Different title, same corner of the shelf

A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's widow on a train journey from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Criss Cross poster
Criss Cross
1949 Β· dir. Robert Siodmak
πŸ… 86%β˜… 7.4crime Β· thriller

Both land grit and tension at once

An armored-car guard must join a robbery after being caught with his ex-wife by her gangster husband.

M poster
M
1931 Β· dir. Fritz Lang
πŸ… 100%β˜… 8.3drama Β· thriller Β· crimeMax

Both lean on atmosphere more than on crime

The difference: Made in the 1930s, in a different era of the craft

In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.

The Big Clock poster
The Big Clock
1948 Β· dir. John Farrow
πŸ… 100%β˜… 7.6crime Β· thriller

Gritty thriller in both cases

George Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor, has to postpone a vacation with his wife - again - when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence that he is the killer.

The Stranger poster
The Stranger
1946 Β· dir. Orson Welles
πŸ… 97%β˜… 7.3thriller Β· crimePrime VideoStarz

Crime built on tension, twice over

An investigator from the War Crimes Commission travels to Connecticut to find an infamous Nazi, who may be hiding out in a small town in the guise of a distinguished professor engaged to the Supreme Court Justice’s daughter.

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The best-reviewed films that share The Big Heat’s defining feeling.