When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty.

hitchcockthelegend

The Lineup is directed by Don Siegel and written by Stirling Silliphant. It stars Eli Wallach, Robert Keith, Warner Anderson and Richard Jaeckel. Music is by Mischa Bakaleinkoff and cinematography by Hal Mohr.

A drug smuggling gang are planting heroin on returning American tourists so as to get the merchandise through customs. Two hired hands, Dancer & Julian (Wallach & Keith respectively) then locate the unsuspecting tourists and reclaim the hidden drugs. But in this moment, with new driver Sandy McLain (Jaeckel) behind the wheel, things are not going to go to plan.

It came at a time when the classic noir cycle was drawing to a close, when the dark alleyways had been replaced by sun brightened streets, but The Lineup is still clinical film noir. Originally a police procedural series that was poplar both on radio and TV, the film version keeps the police on the edges of the frame whilst studying the psychological make-ups of the criminal players. Expertly using real San Francisco locations as the backdrop, Siegel takes Silliphant's spicy script and unfurls a plot of bizarre like twists that are in turn cloaked with devilish noir substance.

The four crims that form the core of the story are most intriguing players. Mclain the hapless getaway driver is in over his head, Dancer is always one push away from being a psychotic basket case and Julian is aged, wise and playing cards close to his chest. It's with the relationship between Dancer & Julian where things are shaded most darkly. Dancer announces to a secondary character (and us of course) that an absent father torments his inner being, armed with this knowledge it's then easy to view the Dancer/Julian relationship as father and son like, this even if Dancer is almost impossible to love. Julian constantly tries to keep Dancer correct and in line, even attempting to make him socially acceptable. Is it a lost cause? Well all these things come to an attention grabbing head in the excellent last quarter.

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Then there is The Man (Vaughn Taylor), a person we only hear about for the most part for he's not introduced until late in the day. He is the guy that Julian & Dancer work for, a shifty Godfather type we believe, as do the hired hands, but Dancer's curiosity gnaws away at him, as it does us the viewers. But when the inevitable happens, Siegel and Sillipant produce another strong film noir character, a pitiless soul who is the catalyst for our trip down bleakville highway, where the cityscape backdrop proves expansive to us, but for Dancer, Julian & Sandy it's an enclosed tomb. 8/10

score 8/10

hitchcockthelegend 1 May 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2605113/