Bighead55555
This is the kind of movie where you want to take a shower afterwards. So much degradation, slimy characters, and dirty-looking locations. Scheider does what Scheider always does, Glover does what Glover always does, Williams does what Williams always does. You see a pattern? The musical score must have been performed on a Commodore 64, and cost $1.98 to produce. While the production is competently lensed, whatever production "value" is overwhelmed by the sordid plot and predictable execution. Tiresome, pedantic, and shopworn, this thing is a pass.
mark.waltz
A truly disturbing Neo film Noir that came in the mid-eighties between "Body Heat" and "Basic Instinct". It is the type of film that you can't take your eyes off of, but when you think about it during and afterwords, you are grossed out by the way it intrigues you. Welcome to the world of'80's glam trash.Roy Scheider is a millionaire businessman with a beautiful wife, played by the luscious Ann-Margret, but he is cheating on her with a much younger woman. He has to entangle with blackmailers of the slimiest kind who will not stop when he outwits them, taking all of them on a journey of intrigue around the Los Angeles basin where nobody seems to end up being the winner.You certainly won't forget John Glover in this movie, having already played many slimy roles on screen. He's the ringleader of a group of blackmailers and Lead writer on a journey is that turns out deadly for many people. Young Kelly Preston is seeing in videotaped evidence of Schneider's affair with her, and one truly disturbing scene may have you turning your eyes away. Another character that ends up suffering at the hands of the nefarious Glover is stripper Vanity somehow managed to get an obscure award nomination for this film but certainly not an Oscar or even a Golden Globe.There are some great moments in the film that are intriguing but as I said they are layered with an uncomfortable feeling of psychotic voyeurism that is often too disturbing to really make it watchable. It is worse than watching a car accident or a train wreck and seeing bodies carried off. I had no issue with the film's slimy way of presenting its story but the way it is resolved had me laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole set up, and while I can see it as being a crowd-pleaser on screen it is dramatically impossible for what happened in the finale to actually occur. Dramatic license can't be bought at the DMV.
SnoopyStyle
Harry Mitchell (Roy Scheider) is a wealthy specialty manufacturer in L.A. with beautiful wife Barbara (Ann-Margret) running for city council. Hooded blackmailers with a video tape of Harry and his mistress Cini (Kelly Preston) want $105k. Harry has a cold relationship with his wife. Cini and her friend Doreen (Vanity) are porn strippers under the thumb of Alan Raimy (John Glover) and his underlings Bobby Shy (Clarence Williams III) and Leo Franks (Robert Trebor). Harry doesn't go to the cops but also refuses to pay. The situation escalates as Alan elevates the blackmail and demands. However Harry counters with negotiations and schemes which pitch the blackmailers against each other.The three bad guys are terrific. There are some dark things going on in this movie. There is a snuff film of Cini. Vanity has a memorable stripper scene. She has a great line after Harry says her picture is a little dark. "That's me, honey." Roy Scheider is a little bit too cold and distant. He needs some more emotions. In a way, he is overpowered by the dark crazy villains because they are such compelling characters.
Lee Eisenberg
Elmore Leonard died recently, and so I decided to watch this movie based on one of his novels. John Frankenheimer directed Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret in "52 Pick-Up", about an industrialist whose affair leads to severe consequences. It seems that the movie is simultaneously testing your willingness to watch a lot of nasty stuff and making you feel as if you want to watch ever more of it. Gross as a lot of it is, Frankenheimer's slick direction keeps even the most unpleasant scene relevant to the story. Mired as the characters are in a world of sleaze, there's sort of no nice way for the story to progress."52 Pick-Up" continues the string of serious movies in which Ann-Margret started appearing in the '70s ("Carnal Knowledge", "Tommy", "Magic"). No doubt she realized that it was time to move away from her sex kitten image. A really different role for her was the 2006 suspense thriller "Memory". Above all, "52 Pick-Up" is a movie that I recommend. It's definitely not going to be for everyone, but I liked it.
AD
