Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

John T. Ryan HAVING EMERGED AS a top network Police Procedural, this version made the move to the big screen in a most s-m-o-o-t-h manner. It was as if it were an extended episode of "THE LINEUP" (aka SAN FRANCISCO BEAT) TV Series. The only thing missing was the character of Inspector Matt Greb (Tom Tully).AS FOR THIS feature film started, we were kept in the dark as some mysterious and complex theft which turned into a car chase, an armed robbery and a double homicide; with the murder of a uniformed Cop and his return fire killing the responsible cab driver.THE PRODUCTION TEAM manages to slowly unfold and reveal the true nature of this criminal enterprise and introduces a number of plausible suspects; as well as some very nasty facilitators. With Eli Wallach, Robert Keith and Richard Jaeckel.WITH THE FILMING being done in the beautiful and nearly surreal hilly landscape of San Francisco, the writer, Stirling Silliphant, skillfully blends in the maritime trade, merchant marine, sea travel and narcotics smuggling. The complexity of such an investigation is showcased by the involvement of other agencies. A sense of unity and service to the greater good of the public by the cooperation of the SFPD with the United States Customs and the Coast Guard.AS WE STATED before, the transition of the characters and setting of THE LINEUP TV Series was a skillfully accomplished as any; but that is not the film's only legacy. Its outstanding scribe, writer Stirling Silliphant, was the main writer on the NAKED CITY TV Series (Screen Gems/Shelle Prod./ABC TV, 1958-63). This means that THE LINEUP was directly ancestral to the NAKED CITY Series.SO, HOW'S THAT, Schultz? We bet that you sure didn't think that we'd bring genealogy into the discussion! EXTRA!! BULLETIN!! BREAKING NEWS!! WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM!!OUR CONGRATULATIONS to THE LINEUP (Columbia/Pajemer Prod., 1958) for its being our 1,000th review here at IMDb.com. This should never have taken us so long. There were times when we did only a few in a year's time; but never again, as we pledge at least 20 every month! THANX TO YOU, IMDb.com!

museumofdave Far too often, car chase films made in San Francisco are laughable because the locations don't match up with reality--the magic of this film is its logic and locale accuracy; not only is this a stunning film noir that often takes place in broad daylight (without the usual attendant shadows and smoke), it is also a tour of so many legendary places that no longer exist, most notably a lengthy sequence shot at Sutro Baths, the magical Victorian amusement center that had a last gasp during the period this film was made--you can also see the dank interior of the pre-remodeled Steinhart Aquarium (also featured in Welles' Lady From Shanghai), and experience a steep drive up California Street, spotting an actual theatre marquee at the Fairmont Hotel--the Nob Hill cinema was still there instead of on Bush Street--and it's featuring An Affair To Remember! OK--Im a sucker for specific detailed shots of The City by The Bay--but when mixed with this strange tale of a jumpy psychopath, perfectly tuned by cold-blooded Eli Wallach in conjunction with his teacher, twitchy Robert Keith, as the frightening pair track down some smuggled heroin, the story tossing in in a vivid police procedural cogently assembled by Don Siegel, and ending on one of San Francisco's legendary freeways to nowhere--well, its a total winner! The downside, strictly optional, is the disc commentary--not because of affable, informative Eddie Muller, but because the jokey, better-than-thou author Elroy poses as Bad Boy Commentator rather than contribute meaningful dialogue; some may find him amusing, and like a kid who says nasty words to shock the girls, he might be; I just found him snarky and uninformative. I say watch the film, skip the commentary--The Lineup is an underrated classic noir of quality.

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.

J. Spurlin In San Francisco, two police inspectors (Marshall Reed and Emile Meyer) are on the case when a rogue taxi driver, with the help of a rogue porter, manages to steal the suitcase of an antiques collector before running down a cop, whose dying gesture is to shoot the cabbie dead. The inspectors discover that a statuette in the suitcase contains heroin. Meanwhile, a psychopathic gangster (Eli Wallach), his malignant mentor (Robert Keith) and their dipsomaniac driver (Richard Jaeckel) have the job of picking up the other heroin shipments, hidden in the luggage of unsuspecting travelers. All goes well until they attempt to retrieve the heroin stuffed in a Japanese doll. A little girl and her young mother (Cheryl Callaway and Mary LaRoche) have the doll, but when the crooks take possession of it, they find that the heroin has mysteriously vanished.Don Siegel, working from a script by Stirling Silliphant, does a bang-up job directing this explosive crime thriller, which is filled with violent action, surprise plot twists, a spectacular murder in an indoor ice rink and a great climactic car chase. The characters of the police inspectors are carried over from the same-titled TV series, but unlike the show, the movie is mainly concerned with the criminals. Wallach is the star, brilliantly portraying a dangerous man who can be calm, even genial, but reveals his true nature when others try to push him around. The cadaverous Keith is properly ghoulish, especially while taking note of the day's victims' dying words. Callaway proves to be a very adept child actress, while her lovely screen mother, LaRoche (who also had trouble with her daughter's doll in a "Twilight Zone" episode), ably performs the difficult task of remaining in a perpetual state of panic.The plot requires a fairly high suspension of disbelief, especially considering the general air of realism, but few will gripe about plausibility in this exciting action drama.