Rating summary
| Movie |  | 3.5 |
| Video | | 3.5 |
| Audio | | 3.5 |
| Extras |  | 0.0 |
| Overall | | 3.5 |
The Lineup Blu-ray Movie Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 22, 2019
Note: This film is available as part of
Noir Archive Volume 3: 1956-1960.
Kit Parker Films and Mill Creek Entertainment continue their deep dive into what might be thought of as the substratum of film noir with
this
third collection culled from the Columbia catalog. The fact that this latest offering supposedly spans the years of 1956 through 1960 may give
some indication of
just how deep this particular dive is, since many film fans will probably (rightly or wrongly) feel like the late fifties and first year of the
sixties are decidedly past the heyday of film noir. (That "supposedly" is in the previous sentence because the earliest actual release date
for the films in this set seems to actually be 1957, not 1956, which perhaps makes my point even better.) Still, as with the first two collections,
there are some really interesting films in this set,
and genre aficionados will most likely find at least a few titles in this set, including some more British productions, that may well spark interest.
For an overview of the previous two releases in this series, please click on the following review links (which, like this one, will contain links of their
own pointing to reviews of the individual films in the set):
Noir Archive Volume 1: 1944-1954 Blu-
ray
review
Noir Archive Volume 2: 1954-1956 Blu-
ray
review
I mentioned in my
The Case Against Brooklyn Blu-
ray review (published in conjunction with this one) how television was a kind of “uncredited” character propelling parts of that film’s story, but if
you look at the advertising for
this film (as represented by the poster above),
The Lineup was being promoted as “too hot” and
“too big” for the “small” (and apparently cool) screen. This often viscerally exciting film was a relatively early effort on the part of Don Siegel
(
Dirty Harry), and it
has the added benefit of featuring Eli Wallach and Richard Jaeckel as two of a trio of sociopaths (the third is essayed by Robert Keith, whose name
may not be completely familiar but whose face will certainly be recognizable to many film fans - see screenshot 10). The story is, like several others
in this third set of
Noir Archive films, centered around illicit drugs, but if the story is more than familiar, the machinations of the bad guys
and some kind of cool location photography in and around San Francisco give this film a very distinctive flavor.
The Lineup Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
The Lineup is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kit Parker Films and Mill Creek Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1.
This is another generally nice looking transfer, one with good contrast, often excellent detail levels, and an organic looking grain field. As with several
other films in this third volume of Noir Archive, there are noticeable variances in clarity and sharpness, many of which are due to what I
assume were the vagaries of location shooting versus in studio sequences. Some of the rear projection can look pretty ragged at times, and there is
occasional mottling that kind of crawls through the frame, but no other significant damage. My score is 3.75.
The Lineup Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
The Lineup features a workmanlike DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track that gets the job done well enough, albeit with an obviously narrow
quality, though with some perhaps surprising energy with regard to sound effects like crashing cars or bullets being fired. Dialogue is rendered cleanly
and clearly throughout, and I noticed no distortion in any of the music cues.
The Lineup Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
None of the three discs in this set feature any supplements.
The Lineup Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
I'm kind of a trivia junkie, especially when it comes to films and television, and so I was kind of surprised that I either hadn't heard of or at least
remembered an apparently pretty long running television series called The Lineup, which was an inspiration for this film (the television series
ran from 1954 - 1960, and so would have been airing when this film was released). That said, even some of the more nefarious aspects of the bad
guys in
this probably could have been aired on broadcast television in the late fifties, and so in that respect, anyway, the marketing hype above is perhaps not
that
well deserved. Technical merits are generally solid, and The Lineup comes Recommended.
