peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2019 10 27 TheLineup

The Lineup

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Back in 1958 the San Francisco Police Department collaborated with Don Siegel in making this anti-drug-trafficking propaganda piece. Everything is black and white! Notionally Eli Wallach is a Floridian fixer inexplicably flown in with his mentor/handler Robert Keith to collect the heroin muled by unsuspecting innocents who cruise from Hong Kong. Things go predictably ary. We're promised a finale at the hands of the mob but it seems SFPD likes to think it can take care of its own, though Warner Anderson's wooden inspector is a long way from Dirty Harry. It's all a bit meh.