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With its emphasis on realism, action that takes place in the daylight and location work, this crime thriller bears all the hallmarks of a docu-noir and the "police procedural" style of its opening scenes reinforces this impression. The movie begins with some fast action and a couple of fatalities which are soon found to be linked to the activities of an international drug-smuggling operation.
At San Francisco's Pier 41, a ship's porter suddenly snatches a passenger's bag and throws it into the back of a waiting taxicab which drives off at great speed and runs down a police officer. The cab driver, who is shot by the dying cop, then dies at the wheel and his vehicle comes to a sudden halt when it collides with a steel-fence barrier. Detective Lieutenant Ben Guthrie (Warren Anderson) and his partner, Inspector Al Quine (Emile Meyer), discover that heroin had been concealed in a statuette that was being carried in the stolen bag and so question its owner. From their investigations, it soon becomes clear that unsuspecting tourists are being used to smuggle heroin into the United States from the Far East and that later, members of the criminal organisation are being used to recover the drugs from the innocent mules.
After the financial loss incurred by the fiasco at Pier 41, the smugglers bring in a couple of hit-men from Miami to ensure that the next three consignments are collected promptly and efficiently. Dancer (Eli Wallach) a volatile psychopath who travels to San Francisco with his mentor, Julian (Robert Keith), makes his first two collections without too much trouble (despite having to kill two people in the process). The third collection involves a woman called Dorothy Bradshaw (Mary LaRoche) who had just arrived back in the U.S. with her daughter Cindy (Cheryl Callaway). The heroin in this case had been hidden in the little girl's Japanese doll, but when the inside of the doll is checked, it's found to be empty. It subsequently comes to light that Cindy had found the packet inside the doll and assuming that it was make-up, had powdered the doll's face with it. Julian persuades Dancer not to kill Dorothy and Cindy because they can be used to convince their employer that they weren't responsible for the loss of the valuable consignment.
Having kidnapped Dorothy and Cindy, the two hit-men make their way to Sutro's museum where they're due to drop off the drugs at a pre-arranged location for subsequent collection by their crime boss who's known simply as "The Man" (Vaughn Taylor). Dancer, in a departure from the instructions he was given, waits to meet "The Man" who is completely uninterested in listening to any explanations for the non-delivery of part of the heroin consignment and this leads to a shocking incident before Dancer leaves the building and then immediately finds himself in a frantic car chase as he, Julian, Dorothy, Cindy and their wheel-man Sandy McLain (Richard Jaeckel) are all pursued at high speed by the cops who have finally tracked them down.
"The Lineup" contains a surprising number of memorable scenes. Examples of this are the ways in which three of the killings are staged as two involve victims who fall spectacularly to their deaths and another involves a servant who tries to escape a hit-man by running up a flight of stairs. When the shooting takes place, the hit-man is seen at ground-level and simultaneously, the reflection of his victim is seen one floor higher. Impressively and despite the distance between them, both men are captured in the same shot by courtesy of a strategically-placed wall mirror.
The meeting involving Dancer and "The Man" provides another standout sequence which gets incredibly tense when the violent thug (Dancer) starts to feel tremendously threatened by the wheelchair-bound crime boss and of course, the car chase that brings the movie to its climax is exciting, well-choreographed and illuminated by some special moments (e.g. when the criminals narrowly avoid a fall of about 50 feet when their car unexpectedly reaches the end of an unfinished, elevated highway).
There's a sharp distinction between the cops and the criminals in this movie because the detectives are rather grim-looking and world-weary whereas the criminals (especially Dancer and Julian) are full of eccentricities that make them far more interesting to watch. Predictably therefore, it's the performances of Robert Keith and especially Eli Wallach that make the greatest impact and in so doing, add tremendous colour to this fine, fast-moving and violent thriller which must've been pretty edgy for the period in which it was made.
score 9/10
seymourblack-1 25 April 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3693406/ |
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24-2-2021 18:06:21