Elmore Leonard’s terse crime stories seem almost readymade for the movies, and he’s been eager to help translate them from page to screen. Leonard co-wrote the screenplay for the adaptation of his novel 52 Pick-up. The 1986 thriller by director John Frankenheimer is out now on Blu-ray.
Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret play Harry and Barbara, a professionally successful couple whose separate emotional lives are implied visually in the opening scenes. When Harry visits the love nest of his mistress, he finds a gun to his head and a trio of masked blackmailers demanding money. Barbara is considering a political run and has no idea of Harry’s infidelity. He comes clean, hoping to break the blackmailers’ hold, but no dice: they cling like leeches and connive increasingly deadly ways to suck his lifeblood.
Harry strikes back, and finds that slime is an unstable element. These are thieves with little honor and less camaraderie.
Ann-Margret is capable in her supporting role and Scheider plays like a second-tier Michael Douglas. The kidnappers get the best performances, especially Clarence William III as the implacable Bobby Shy. The story is interesting for the milieu of the blackmailers, a porno movie making strip-club subculture—think Boogie Nights gone evil. In this context, the eroticized violence makes a certain as these D-minus camera bugs stage their crimes as snuff spectacle. By the time he made 52 Pick-up, Frankenheimer was the once-great director whose resume included at least one classic, The Manchurian Candidate. 52 Pick-up represents him as a still-capable director of genre pictures. Thanks to Leonard's story, it holds interest from start through finish.
