It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Adultery, blackmail and revenge are three of the main ingredients of this Elmore Leonard story which starts off fairly routinely but soon becomes thoroughly absorbing because of the ways in which the plot develops. The storyline takes numerous unexpected turns that have the virtue of seeming perfectly natural whilst also whetting the appetite for what's to follow. Add to this an array of exceptionally well-drawn characters and some really snappy dialogue and the end-result is a top class crime thriller that will probably surpass the expectations of most people who see it.Harry Mitchell (Roy Scheider) is a successful businessman whose affair with a much younger dancer turns sour when he goes to her apartment and is held at gunpoint by three masked men who show him a videotape which contains some very graphic evidence of the nature of his relationship with her. His blackmailers demand $105,000 for the tape but Harry recognises that paying won't necessarily stop them from making further demands. He can't report the matter to the police because his wife Barbara (Ann-Margaret) is planning to run for the city council and so he confesses everything to his wife and refuses to pay the ransom.The blackmailers are predictably furious and respond by forcing him to watch another film in which his mistress is shot and killed by his gun (which the gang leader had earlier stolen from his house). Having successfully framed him for his mistress' murder, the blackmailers turn the screw a little bit tighter by demanding regular annual payments which Harry's in no position to pay. The only option left open to him is to take matters into his own hands and the ways in which he takes revenge on his tormentors are both ingenious and enjoyable to watch.Roy Scheider and Ann-Margaret are extremely effective in their roles and the exchanges between them are particularly well-acted. Barbara's suspicions about Harry's extracurricular activities are evident well before he gets blackmailed and the humiliation, anger and pain that she feels are portrayed very powerfully. Harry's a conventional type of guy who finds that his mid-life affair was actually a honey-trap and then uses intelligence as his main weapon in identifying his blackmailers and eliminating the threat that they pose to him.The villains of the piece are a despicable trio of extortionists who all work in different branches of the sex industry. The leader is Alan Raimy (John Glover) who makes porn movies and runs an adult cinema. He's utterly ruthless, incredibly slimy and violates Barbara in a particularly shocking way. Bobby Shy (Clarence Williams 111) is a pimp and a violent psychopath who says very little but is also tremendously threatening and Leo Franks (Robert Trebor) is a whimpering, nervous wreck who runs a strip club and is well out of his depth as a criminal. These characters are all brought to life very convincingly by some great performances that add considerable colour to the whole drama."52 Pick-Up" is tense, sleazy and unpredictable and certainly merits far more recognition than it's ever received to date.

The acting, dialogue, and casting was about perfect for this material. The big Hollywood studios apparently wouldn't accept this script so Elmore Leonard had to go to Cannon (a.k.a., that company made all those horrible films in the Eighties). It has the feel of a low budget film, with a lot of rising stars, falling stars, people bumping into the camera by accident, and a director long past his prime, but it holds up pretty well. There's not one stereotypical L.A. landmark or establishing shot, the film is better than to try and look generic. Clarence Williams is a believably scary murderer, and the other villains equally repulsive and hateable in their own unique ways. If any character is underwritten, it is the protagonist and his wife, who just seem boringly bland and familiar, but that is sort of inevitable in these types of movies where everything hinges our needing to identify with the victim.The film is entertaining as any other genre piece of the era, by far one of the better crime dramas of the Eighties, and easily the best of Cannon's direct-to-video cheapos. I'd have liked it even better if it had stuck to its strong suit and went all in with its dark humor (as the film was flirting with the entire run-time but never committed to). The ending was kind of predictable, maybe other films have over-used the idea since but it doesn't date well. Seemed like a throwaway climax.

Just watched this movie today on a used VHS tape I bought several days ago. This is the one where Roy Scheider is blackmailed by the villainous trio of Robert Trebor, Clarance Williams III, and as the ringleader, John Glover. They have evidence he cheated on his beautiful wife Ann-Margret with a hooker played by the young Kelly Preston. The title refers to the amount in thousands Scheider is supposed to pay but he has other plans...Directed by John Frankenheimer from a screenplay co-written by Elmore Leonard on whose book it's based on, this was a very absorbing thriller even with the somewhat cheesy '80s score tacked on. Everyone I've mentioned are quite good with both Williams and Glover especially turning on the heat. Pop singer Vanity is also good as a roommate of Ms. Preston's who provides her own moments with Scheider and Williams. From the Golan-Globus team at Cannon Films, 52 Pick-Up is one of their most compelling films made during their '80s heyday. P.S. This is one of those movies that doesn't use the fake 555 prefix whenever a telephone number is mentioned.

Life's going not to badly for Harry Mitchell, he's an ex-air force major (plus nifty little pension I imagine), who's raking in the cash for a patent he's developed (fusing titanium and steel via explosive process, creating super metal fit for NASA), and his wife of twenty-odd years has kept herself in pretty good nick. He's got a nice little pad in LA. I like to see visions of the 80s consumer dream, and you get a good slice here, what with the restored silver Jag (a series 1 E-type roadster) for him, and the gorgeous antique dolls house for her (as well as I'm sure other trinkets and boys toys). There's always got to be more though hasn't there? So Harry let's himself get caught up in some romantic shenanigans (you're only as old as the woman you're feeling). As in many films noir, one mistake, in an otherwise blotch-less life, leads to a downwards arc for Harry.Three blackmailers leech onto him. These are where the value are for me, great character actors playing very believable roles. Bobby Shy (played by Clarence Williams III) is a black ex-con who is capable of performing incredible psychopathic acts in order to avoid jail and punish double-crossers. He's reminiscent of Pluto, the vicious black ex-con psychopath from Carl Franklin's well-regarded neo-noir "One False Move" (1992). There's a similar character motivation I believe. Both men have had enough of the man, and well pretty much everyone, in extremis. Robert Trebor plays Leo Franks, a fat lily-livered pansy who runs a nudie parlour where gents can photograph nude models at $25 for half an hour, and $50 for a whole hour (did anyone else guffaw at the lack of discount?). He's in over his head, and it's great to watch Trebor acting when Leo starts to feel the heat, believable breakdown. John Glover wins as Alan Raimy, who is the brains of the plot, an actually brilliant man who becomes a pornographer and turns to a life of crime out of sheer sociopathic ennui. He's a sexual sadist and does a few particularly unpleasant things during the movie, including what I believe is a pretty well-implied rape (pay attention to his RAP sheet readout, it's easily missed, and read between the lines for the motel scene with "Slim").In common with One False Move, though not exclusively, I think the real impact of the movie is in the unusually communicative scenes of violence.So far so good but I think there's a real problem with the film. Harry Mitchell is told at one point that he has his "tit in the wringer". My problem is that Harry Mitchell is played by Roy Scheider. Roy Scheider protagonists never lose, they're self-sure and smooth, but not in an annoying way. I feel I'm being asked to believe that his character is in peril, the movie relies on this for dramatic tension; however I didn't believe it. For me it's like being asked to believe that Sandra Bullock's character is going to end up sleeping alone by the end of a romantic drama, or Stephen Seagal's character is going to get taken down by the baddies (did actually happen in one movie but was done deliberately for shock value). Roy Scheider doesn't convince as an adulterer either, you don't feel any annoyance with him at all, his character is Teflon-coated.It also felt like a movie that took some cuts. At 110 minutes it still feels underdeveloped: Harry's wife, Ann Margaret, is pretty much a cardboard cutout, an extension of Harry, her back story as a politician running for office receives scant attention. The effect that the affair has on Harry's marriage isn't properly communicated. This could be a Frankenheimer problem, he's not known for character development. I never felt that Harry was dealing with little more than an overtly annoying and erroneous tax claim from the IRS. There is good sleazy violent noir content in this film, but I feel that to be in the excellent bracket that the casting of Harry could have been done better (no disrespect to the great Roy Scheider). The film felt short, even with the long running time, and I think could have taken some more fleshing out.But you really can't forget the sleaze, like the deliciously pervy scene of Harry taking photos of Doreen in the nudie parlour.