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d. John Frankenheimer; pr. Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan; scr. Elmore Leonard, John Steppling; novel. Elmore Leonard; ph. Jost Vacano; m. Gary Chang; ed. Robert F. Shugrue; cast. Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret, John Glover, Clarence Williams III, Robert Trebor, Doug McClure, Vanity (110 mins)

52 PICKUP FACTS: PROMOTION - For the tagline, the filmmakers went with an elemental approach to the crime genre, highlighting essential ingredients in "Greed. Extortion. Revenge." (read more); FILM TALES - Director Frankenheimer was initially distraught to learn that producers Golan-Globus had the film rights but was delighted to discover the creative freedom (within budget) that the producers gave him to make the film; Porn stars Amber Lynn and Ron Jeremy appear in the film's party sequence; to get the feel of porno filmmaking, director Frankenheimer visited the set of a Ron Jeremy shoot only to be hurried out the back when filming was raided by the police; SPONSOR DETAILS: This review of 52 Pick-Up is sponsored by Inkstone Digital - the latest ebooks for as low as $8.95 with new titles added weekly (read more);

Director John Frankenheimer’s career had reached a critical low in the early 1980s.

The once prominent auteur was increasingly written off as a coarsened hack whose glory days were long gone. Undaunted, Frankenheimer persisted, hoping to adapt the Elmore Leonard novel 52 Pick Up into a movie but disillusioned when he learned that the screen rights were held by Cannon Films, known exclusively for reactionary, disreputable action movies. Not only that, but the novel had previously been filmed by J. Lee Thompson as The Ambassador, a film targeting the Israeli-Palestinian issue more so than the declining American morality at the core of Leonard’s work. Cannon was anxious to escape its dismissive labelling, however, and were in turn very supportive of the director, who attracted Roy Scheider to the project and with Leonard then set down to work out a feasible script, staying as close to the novel and its seedy American milieu as possible. Although the film emerged to the satisfaction of everyone involved, distribution problems limited its release: ironically thus, Cannon’s best reviewed film to that date would have to wait for most to discover it some time later. Despite the lacklustre theatrical release, the film would be a hit on video and from there made several critics take notice of Frankenheimer once again: indeed, the film would prove the turning point for his prolonged comeback over the next fifteen years.

Roy Scheider plays an affluent self-made businessman whose wife (Ann Margret) is set to be involved in a political campaign. Their marriage lacks much communication, however, and such is Scheider’s middle-aged marital discontent that he has been having a secret affair, which he dutifully goes to a motel to continue.

There, he finds an unexpected greeting as he is forced at gunpoint to watch a video showing footage of him with his young mistress: he is now being blackmailed and wonders if he has been set up all along. Out of concern for his wife’s impending career, Scheider does not go to the police and decides to handle the matter himself. Meanwhile, the blackmailers (John Glover, Clarence Williams III, Michael Trebor) confidently indulge their seedy lifestyle, on the fringes of the porn world and sex industry. When they go to pick up the money they have demanded, they find a surprise – Scheider refuses to give the blackmailers the money they want. In response they hatch another plan, and Glover goes to Scheider’s house. Soon, Scheider is taken and shown another film, in which his young lover is shot with his pistol, as other evidence from his personal possessions is left at the crime scene to incriminate him in murder. Scheider has no choice but to confess his infidelity to his wife and sets about reversing the situation, tracking down the blackmailers in the hope of turning them against one another.

52 Pick Up is about facades, the repercussions of discontent, deceit and immorality. As such, it is perhaps Frankenheimer’s most explicit moral parable since his view of marital discontent in I Walk the Line.

The film is in effect thus structured as the systematic erosion of all ideals, values and desires, humanized by its almost melancholic look at a marriage from which all communication and love has been eroded. Erosion is the key concept here as the film examines what happens when the moral barriers that “decent” people erect to separate themselves from the immorality of modern America – as represented by the fringes of the pornography industry – cannot prevent the lure of vice. Like many Frankenheimer heroes thus, Scheider must pay for his actions and his desire to transgress the codes he has sworn to adhere to. His lies and deception put him in a position which costs not only money but lives. There is no alternative to the moral seepage this film considers inherent in modern Americana, as the ideal of upper middle-class American married contentment is a crumbling illusion wherein inherent Patriarchal and Oedipal sexual longing wounds a man to the point of re-assessing his life and priorities. In this sense, the villains, especially the Mephistophelian Glover are the predators of conscience, the all-consuming evil of vice feared by the American middle-class but secretly idolized in its popular culture.

Frankenheimer is aware of this loathing and fascination dialectic and thus devotes much of the film to the contrast of apposite lifestyles: Scheider’s remote, non-communicative marriage versus the pornographer’s decadence and violence, punctuated by self-reflexive films-within-films.

The culture of immorality is as much the focus as the repercussions of immorality on long-held moral standards. Although set in opposition, the film’s repeated contrast implies a parasitic moral equivocation in American culture: that attractive vice dominates and erodes all. The film emerges as a scathing indictment of these values, exposing the ugliness and yet also the attraction that lies behind the division between such extremes within these American cultural values. Contamination is inevitable and morality thus only relative to the worst examples. Those wholly consumed by the culture of vice and unable to extricate themselves cannot be reasoned with and when confronted will eventually destroy themselves. Indulgent, self-consuming immorality comprises the American lost soul. It seems as if Frankenheimer and Leonard intended the film as a look at the consequences of a kind of cultural abyss-gazing. Thus, instead of the comparative glamour and pleasure found in such later Leonard adaptations as Get Shorty, ultimately there is only sleazy despair, making 52 Pick Up the bleakest of all Leonard adaptations.

The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is adequate, the grainy film stock and dull colours giving the film an often downcast look. Indeed, the film is most alive in its colour and energy during the porno party sequence, as if the surrounding America feeds off such invigorating vice. A nice use of an opening descending camera suggests the idea of a higher judgment, nicely fitting into the characterization of Scheider as a man punished for his sins. Fine use is made of reflective surfaces, and mobile camerawork as opposed to the notion of stasis that perhaps underlies Scheider’s discontent. Noirish lighting and shadows abound as the film travels through its murky world, prowling steadicam shots lending a fluidity to many scenes. The inherently lurid subculture of pornography and sex-shops is well developed in all its ambiguity as the allure of decadence, in tantalizing nudity, is nicely suggested alongside the film’s dramatization of consequence. It is a highly self-reflexive movie, full of images-within-images and evoking the downward spiral of American morality in its highly inter-related depiction of both pornography and snuff movies: the culture of sensation. Set design is always vivid, with a telling attention to detail and locations are effectively used in order to visualize the underlying concept of the city as a fallen, lustful and immoral world. Likewise, the pride that Scheider shows in reversing the situation underlies his own inherent moral ambiguity: maybe he too is fallen.

Sound
The sound is available in Dolby Digital Surround and is a competent mix despite some hiss and a rather dated and functional 1980s type score. Voices are crisp, however, and there is a fine directional placement of diegetic sounds ensuring that the transfer achieves fullness. The brooding silence of the marital home is nicely contrasted to the boisterous fun of the decadent lifestyle, the latter being at first most alluring before the depths of human action it hides are revealed in the film’s course. The clash between moral stagnation and the hot energy of vice is well established and becomes a dominant organizing principle in the film’s aural as well as visual design. Voices are often intentionally comical, especially in the trio of villains, who emerge as the most engaging characters. Gunshots feature effectively and nice use is made of the sudden absence of most diegetic sounds at key moral turning points. There is a sly humour throughout, however despairing, enhancing the more ambiguous aspects of the film’s study of morality. Sounds of cameras – film and still – and projectors feature self-referentially and the mounting desperation, confusion, fear and pain in the characters is well established in the course of events. Effective use is also made of the noise from radio and television in the background to many scenes. Likewise, the off-screen presence of traffic and other city noises feature well as an evocation of urban environs.