It’s almost a hundred degrees in New York City, today. I live in New York City, so I’m not super thrilled about this. I thought that I should make you all share my pain and round up a bunch of crime movies that are very, very hot.
To be clear, I don’t mean “hot” as in sexy. I mean “hot” as in… weather. This is a list of some of the sweatiest crime movies, and again, I don’t mean in a sexual sense. This is a list of movies about outdoor temperatures running high and causing people to go crazy and do crazy things.
Why would you watch a movie about torrid and tropical temperatures if you’re currently experiencing those very temperatures? I don’t know. But now you have the option.
Okay, without further ado, I’ll bring the heat:
Do the Right Thing (1989)
I love Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing because it’s a masterpiece but also because it perfectly represents an excruciating New York City summer day. Taking place at Sal’s Pizzeria in Bed-Stuy on the hottest day of summer, it is a story of racism and neighborhood tensions boiling over in the heat until they culminate in extraordinary violence against the Black neighborhood citizens.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Another of the masterpieces on this list, Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon is based on true events, and follows Al Pacino and John Cazale as they attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank on an extremely hot summer afternoon, but wind up stuck inside after the police arrive—and, in a surprising twist, rallying the bank workers and the crowds outside in genuine support. No surprise when the cops shut off the bank’s AC and everyone in there starts melting.
Cool Hand Luke, (1967)
Ah, Cool Hand Luke, a stirring, multi-layered film about an “original” of a man named Luke Jackson (Paul Newman), who is sentenced to two years in a rural Southern prison (for the minor, anti-Capitalist crime of decapitating parking meters) and who completely refuses to conform to the warden’s behavioral rules, rebelling against petty tyranny and giving all the other prisoners hope. And he tries to escape too. Anyway, the movie mostly takes place in a prison in the deep South, where everyone is sweating like crazy.
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Yeah, so, in Act 1, Scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet, Benvolio warns the Montagues against hotheadedly brawling with the Capulets: “The day is hot, the Capulets abroad, And, if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl; For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.” The sweltering heat is a really important part of why the tension between the play’s two warring families mounts so strongly, and Franco Zefferelli’s very 60s Romeo and Juliet leans into this beautifully. It’s a really hot summer in Verona, and the kids… they are not all right.
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
Die Hard with a Vengeance, otherwise known as Die Hard 3, takes a break from the Christmas Eve settings of the previous two films and instead sets this one during a VERY sweaty summer in New York City. John McClane (Bruce Willis) is on suspension from the NYPD when a mysterious psychopathic puppet-master (Jeremy Irons) insists that innocent people with die if John doesn’t play a game with him. They’re already dying from the heat stroke, but no matter.
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Angry Men doesn’t physically leave the maddeningly hot courtroom chamber where the jurors are deliberating after a murder trial, which makes the summer heat a lot worse. You haven’t dealt with summer heat in NYC until you’ve experienced summer heat in a semi-dilapidated municipal building.
Weekend at Bernie’s (1989)
Even without seeing it, you definitely know the most famous aspect of the Weekend at Bernie‘s mise-en-scene (sticking a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap on a dead guy and attempting to prop him up). But a less-famous element is that the impetus for all this is our two protagonists flee the record-breaking heatwave in NYC and head to the Hamptons where their soon-to-be-dead boss is staying for the weekend.
Body Heat (1989)
I know at the start of this list I said that I didn’t mean “hot” as in “sexy” but Body Heat has the rare distinction of being both swelteringly hot and, well, swelteringly hot. I’ll let BookMarks Editor-in-Chief Dan Sheehan take over, here: “Every time Hurt and Turner appear on screen together, clothed or otherwise, the titular heat could melt steel beams. Right from the jump they’ve got the kind of uninhibited, almost vulgar chemistry of two people who know exactly where things are headed. They’re wolfish with one another’s bodies, they way they eye and salivate and ultimately devour.” Talk about stopping the world to “melt with you.”
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Sidney Poitier, suave as ever, plays Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective from Philadelphia who becomes involved in a murder investigation in a small Mississippi town, which is unsurprisingly very racist (ahem, he winds up involved IN the murder investigation after he’s wrongfully arrested FOR the murder, without cause, because he’s Black and a stranger). Rod Steiger won an Oscar for playing the town’s racist police chief with whom Tibbs must work to solve the crime. The story is extremely believable and real. The only thing about it that is unbelievable is that Sidney Poitier can wear that suit the whole time in the God-awful Mississippi heat! The 60s! People did it!
Rear Window (1954)
One of the first shots of Rear Window reveals the red in Jimmy Stewart’s mercury wall thermometer stretching past 90 ℉. Not only is he stuck in a wheelchair in his apartment for weeks, but he’s stuck there during the hottest days of the year. His neighbors are sleeping out on the fire escape and murdering their wives, and he’s spying on them all. People do crazy things in hot temperatures.
