The Lineup Reviews

The first chunk must be endured before you get to the good stuff in The Lineup. Based on a popular TV show of the era, director Don Seigel is clearly enamored with his bad guy more than he is with the stoic cops from the small screen. Why shouldn’t he be when he’s played with typical live-wire intensity and unpredictability by Eli Wallach? I’d rather watch Wallach behaving badly than Marshall Reed performing on autopilot.

Once the generic opening is over The Lineup gets good and weird. Wallach and Robert Keith make for a fascinating duo with Keith all gentlemanly killer to Wallach’s loose cannon. They talk at length in a manner that clearly paved the way for Quentin Tarantino and just as quickly turn deadly and serious. Watching them threaten a woman and child over a stash of heroin hidden in a doll is the best of noir’s descent into the demimonde.

The rest of the film, again the part that must bring in the TV players, plays things too safely. We must restore order, of course, but you spend a lot of time rooting for these two to behave badly. When it all comes crashing down in a high-speed chase through a developing freeway, The Lineup manages to convince you that there’s a diamond in the rough. If there’s no more perfect symbol for the film than the under-construction freeway that’s incomplete with a car teetering on the brink, then I don’t know what else it would be.