The Lineup

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nick s Surprisingly gritty and with more action than typical movies of this era. The antagonist was great. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 11/15/23 Full Review Bill B The first half is pretty stiff, like an episode of Dragnet. But it picks up after that and ends up with a satisfying finale. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 06/11/23 Full Review Audience Member Great scenes of late 1950's San Francisco, including the Sutro Baths before it burned down. excellent performances by Wallach as Dancer, a cold blooded killer, and Robert Keith as the participant/narrator who tells us about his psycho killer comrade. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member A few years before director Don Siegel did his classic take on Hemingway's The Killers which followed two hit men on a contract hit he did this movie with a similar plot. Robert Keith and Eli Wallach really aren't hit men in The Lineup. They are a hired collection men tracking down drugs unknowingly transported into America by innocent citizens. Siegel's direction, even with the low budget constraints, is impressive and Wallach's interpretation of a psychopath is worthy of him getting star billing even though he's in the movie for half of its running time. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Audience Member Crisp, police procedural (bringing a then-current TV show to the screen) from Don Siegel (subsequently Clint Eastwood's favourite director). As he would later do in his remake of The Killers (1964) and Dirty Harry (1971), Siegel takes a special interest in the psychopathic tendencies of his characters. Eli Wallach (in his second film) plays the central baddie who is a contract worker for "The Man" who is using innocent tourists as mules to bring heroin into the USA. Once they disembark, their luggage is stolen and the stuff is extracted and given to The Man. Wallach and his partner/mentor, played by Robert Keith, arrive in San Francisco (where the film was shot on location) to retrieve the luggage/drugs from three passengers on a docking ship. However, things don't go too smoothly - because Wallach's character is a psychopath. Because the police have been tipped off, we see them closing in on the killers as well as what the killers are doing (in parallel). Siegel is far more interested in the killers and the police procedural scenes play like the rote TV episodes they're drawn from - they are kept purposefully brief (and thus taut). So, there's nothing particularly extraordinary here but solid crime show fare, with a few nods to past films noir (murder in a stream room, a person in a wheelchair gets offed, the same aquarium that Welles shot in The Lady from Shanghai is used). San Francisco does look great. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member Eli Wallach leaves the unmemorable lawmen in the dust in the the most chilling role of his entire career. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/22/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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