The Lineup

A film noir set in San Francisco. A drug ring has found a way to bring heroin into the city: it is hidden in the luggage of arriving passengers, inside souvenirs, toys and figurines. None of the travellers knows; there are men waiting to collect it. Dancer is the one sent to do the collecting. Julian is with him; old, calm, guiding him and treating the work as a profession. The two go down the addresses on the list. At each stop the goods are taken and, if necessary, a person is removed. At one address it goes wrong. From there the film becomes a chase, and the last section takes place on an unfinished motorway; the road is closed and there is no way off. What the film is interested in is not the police investigation but how the two men work: Dancer is angry and unstable, while Julian measures him and writes each victim's last words in a notebook. It comes from a television series, and the police sections carry that inheritance; the real film appears when you look from the other side. It was shot on location, in the streets of the city. Eli Wallach, Robert Keith and Richard Jaeckel are in the cast. Don Siegel directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1950s noir and crime stories shot in real places. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for the police side; those sections are weak and the film takes its strength from the criminals.