52 Pick-Up

Based on Elmore Leonard’s far superior book, 52 Pick-Up follows Roy Scheider’s Harry Mitchell as he’s forced to take the law into his own hands after three thugs (John Glover’s Alan, Clarence Williams III’s Bobby, and Robert Trebor’s Leo) attempt to blackmail him with evidence of an illicit affair. Filmmaker John Frankenheimer has infused 52 Pick-Up with an aggressively deliberate pace that proves disastrous, as the ensuing lack of momentum prevents the viewer from embracing the central character’s plight on a distressingly continuous basis. The hands-off atmosphere is compounded by a frustrating emphasis on sequences of an overlong and sporadically needless variety, and although Frankenheimer has peppered the narrative with a handful of admittedly engrossing moments (eg Scheider’s character is forced to watch the murder of his girlfriend on videotape), Harry’s campaign of violence against his oppressors isn’t even remotely as satisfying or as visceral as Frankenheimer has undoubtedly intended. (This is despite Harry’s appreciatively harsh takedown of the film’s final surviving villain, which is almost Saw-like in its brutality.) The end result is a thriller that’s woefully lacking in thrills, with the less-than-engrossing atmosphere exacerbated by a preponderance of dated elements (eg Gary Chang’s distracting, synth-heavy score).

*1/2 out of ****