X
- 1986
- R
- Cannon Film Distributors
- 1 h 50 m
- 1986
- R
- Cannon Film Distributors
- 1 h 50 m
Summary A secret fling between a man and his mistress leads to blackmail and murder.
Directed By: John Frankenheimer
Written By: Elmore Leonard, John Steppling
- 1986
- R
- Cannon Film Distributors
- 1 h 50 m
- 1986
- R
- Cannon Film Distributors
- 1 h 50 m
52 Pick-Up
55
User Score
Mixed or Average
5.8
Where to Watch
Summary A secret fling between a man and his mistress leads to blackmail and murder.
Directed By: John Frankenheimer
Written By: Elmore Leonard, John Steppling
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
55
36% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
45% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
18% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
55
36% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
45% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
18% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
This is a well-crafted movie by a man who knows how to hook the audience with his story; it's Frankenheimer's best work in years.
The bad guys are genuinely creepy, the victims likable enough to engage sympathy, and the conflict among the the crooks a kind of wild-card element. If they still made "film noir," the brooding crime fiction of Hollywood in the '40s and '50s, it would look something like this. You have to feel good for Elmore. [7 Nov 1986, p.D2]
ELMORE LEONARD'S thrillers leap so easily to the screen that it's astounding so few of them have gotten there. Even with the kind of slapdash, unsightly production that's been given 52 Pick-Up, Mr. Leonard's stories make terrific, unself-conscious B-movies of the sort that are more and more rare.
52 PICK-UP is "Death Wish" for yuppies...But all the slime and grime can't camouflage the sameness of this standard, divide-and-conquer story.
52 Pick-Up loses its sense of social texture in the last third when everyone begins to die by decree of formulaic three-act screenwriting, and its indifference to the plight of Harry’s wife (Ann-Margret) is unseemly, but the film is an often nightmarish gem awaiting rediscovery.
52 Pick-Up is a thriller without any thrills. Although director John Frankenheimer stuffs as much action as he can into the screen adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel (previously filmed by Cannon in Israel in 1984 as The Ambassador), he can't hide the ridiculous plot and lifeless characters.
John Frankenheimer has directed 52 Pick-Up in a style so devoid of nuance, the movie almost watches itself. From the crosscutting between Scheider and Ann-Margret that opens the film (an exchange of glances so portentous you think an earthquake is about to hit Los Angeles) to the way every emotion is underlined with tight close-ups, 52 Pick-Up is so aggressively explicit that it might have been made for an audience of trained apes.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 4 User Ratings
5.8
25% Positive
1 Rating
1 Rating
50% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
25% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 4 User Ratings
5.8
25% Positive
1 Rating
1 Rating
50% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
25% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
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