Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

seymourblack-1 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.

A_Different_Drummer How could you go wrong? Directed by Siegal.Written by Silliphant.Starring Wallach.I realize as this is written (2016) B&W police procedurals from the 1950s are no longer cool, and to many this is a piece of history.But I just re-watched it and I suggest it holds up regardless of age. The last 10 minutes includes a scene where one of the two gangsters explains to a helpless female captive that criminals "need" violence and that regular folk never understood that. A double irony -- and a credit to Silliphant's genius -- is that this particular character never touched a gun in his life.Wallach of course steals the show. By a bizarre coincidence I was watching GOOD BAD AND UGLY (Leone) on another device at the same time and I was gob-smacked at how this actor could hold the camera like no other.Recommended.

Claudio Carvalho In the harbor of San Francisco, a porter throws the suitcase of a passenger that has just arrived from Asia into a taxi and the driver hits a truck and a police officer that kills him before dying. The owner Philip Dressler (Raymond Bailey) explains to the police Lieutenant Ben Guthrie (Warner Anderson) and Inspector Al Quine (Emile Meyer) that the content of the suitcase are antiques that he bought in Asia from a street vendor. However the police laboratory discover that one statuette has heroin hidden inside and the inspectors replace the drug per sugar and return the suitcase to Dressler, who is a citizen above suspicion. Meanwhile the gangster Dancer (Eli Wallach), who is a psychopath; his partner Julian (Robert Keith) and the alcoholic driver Sandy McLain (Richard Jaeckel) are hired by the kingpin The Man (Vaughn Taylor) to collect the heroin packages that have been smuggled hidden in the luggage of three other innocent tourists. They succeed to retrieve the two firsts, but the load of the third one vanishes and they panic. Meanwhile the police is hunting them under the command of Lt. Guthrie. "The Lineup" is another great police story directed by Don Siegel. The story is original and the action scenes in San Francisco are impressive for a 1958 film. The dysfunctional criminals are peculiar and Eli Wallach performs a psychopath killer; Robert Keith takes notes of the last words of Dancer's victims in a notebook; and Richard Jaeckel is an alcoholic driver. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "O Sádico Selvagem" ("The Wild Sadist")

jzappa The Lineup immediately establishes a distinct, rich setting, evoking the senses with a crescendo that ends before becoming overbearing. The dramatic tension starts right off with the hatching of a significant situation. Interestingly, our protagonist does not show up for quite awhile. But when he shows up, it becomes all about him, and he gives the film a straightforward brutality. It begins as a police procedural and becomes a crime procedural, two pairs on opposite sides brushing against each other in a modernist abyss.Eli Wallach is very interesting here, more than in other, better films in which I've seen him. There's a perilous balance between living and dying that he brings to his vicious character, and an inventively allusive quality in Robert Keith, who plays his controlling mentor, who calls him "a wonderful, pure pathological study," and corrects his grammar. And it's all made clear through their present actions.This film is significant for its brutal plot, but what makes it surmount the average B movie is the oddly incendiary dialogue. And it's admirably fast-paced, almost reminiscent of modern filmmakers like Scorsese and Meirelles, Siegel himself having famously said of editing, "If you shake a movie, ten minutes will fall out." Everybody is a dedicated employee in a business, a wry joke appreciated by Don Siegel in a scrupulous study of the San Francisco topography. Siegel likes to move his camera forward down interior hallways. This takes place both in the opera house and the Seaman's Club. He also incorporates pans in the interior of buildings, in addition to exterior locations. His pans occasionally expose entire facets of frontages, which veer into view as he pans. These pans and tracks have a superb characteristic, as substantial, commanding vistas of structural design are shown.Familiar locales are unexpectedly odd, clubs viewed through thick sauna vapors, a silenced revolver wrapped in towel, panoplies of plane, surging panels surrounding a menacing pick-up. Siegel often coordinates his images into a progression of tight parallel zones that run from one side of the screen to the other. They create a succession of shrill matching streaks, continuing through the entire span of the panning of the camera, so that at any certain moment, the zone exists beyond the borders of the screen. Zone after zone will be coated into a shot. It makes for a dense, multifaceted image, with many diverse sorts of commotion in each. The zone can comprise characters or spectators, as in the early shots of the harbor. It can also contain various sorts of architecture or roadways.Upon the level streaks, Siegel establishes compelling verticals as well. These can be towers of buildings, masts of ships, poles or posts in front of buildings: Siegel loves such support structures on formal locations. They can also be recurring windows, telephone poles or trees.Wallach's hopeless defiant impulse segues into the big finale which strikes the pose of the engineered location of the semi-documentary pattern. It concerns a substantially unfinished highway. Siegel's body snatchers are not too alien this milieu, with its carnage and deadpan perversities, like a stash of heroin hidden inside a Japanese doll, and the gangster reaches under her dress for it. Moving in a pattern of tautness and burst, Don Siegel's unsentimental 1958 study of our lack in pure truth or legitimacy, the split but simultaneous world of merely skewed, comparative ideals in line with the disparities of our ailing social order.