The Nickel Ride (1975)

A Disappointing Continuation

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

"The Nickel Ride" is all about mood. There's a nearly-constant feeling a dread in the air. From the first scene, you get the terrifying sensation that something bad is going to happen, and that anything to the contrary is a fleeting illusion. Cooper (played by Jason Miller) is supposedly a guy who everyone likes, but it soon becomes clear that no one respects him. Maybe it's because he stopped fighting a long time ago, back when his apathy buried his anger. There's a sense of hope in him, though, but that just makes him a target. He's in a line of work that perceives anything but the iron fist as a sign of weakness - and it's these desperate days that the opening scene drops us into. Out of a nearly-waking dream, like a mirror of Miller's first film "The Exorcist", he sees something coming that's more a thing of impeding doom than that of direct prophecy.It's a somewhat atypical film for director Robert Mulligan. He was more one for straightforward dramas, rarely tackling a subdued loner-driven narrative like this. This is also an early original script for Eric Roth, who is certainly treading much more uncomplicated ground than on his later stories. He's written something that can be carried completely by performances. "The Nickel Ride" doesn't reach very far, so it's not totally capable of the sort of staying power that keeps other 1970s classics in our minds. But the powerful uneasy feeling and the performance of Jason Miller makes it something special. This is a curious, angry, scared little alleycat of a film.

This is a rare example of the mob-procedural subgenre, and should be issued as a DVD. Castro Theatre in SF screened a print -- which I surmise was somewhat faded and over-purpled/sepiaed -- 18 March 2008 with Friends of Eddie Coyle (which I thought the better of the two). Audience of over 200 applauded warmly, especially Jason Miller's very fine acting. I did not have the trouble some following the plot that commenters reported, or with knowing what was paranoia (once it played out), what was actually happening. Also, Los Angeles sprawl-downtown was instantly recognizable. I also appreciated Linda Haynes' work as cootchie-dancer.

This is a really superb neo-noir and simultaneously realistic look at downtown Los Angeles in the beginning of the seventies. Jason Miller is perfectly cast as Cooper, the morose ex-carny-roustabout-turned-lower-echelon-crime figure. He functions as a semi-independent mob overseer of the storage and fencing of stolen merchandise for an eclectic variety of underworld thieves that cut across all racial divides. The crux of the story involves Cooper trying to close a deal on the purchase of a whole block of abandoned rail warehouses in the derelict 5th and Alameda area of downtown L.A. If he can't pull it off, it may mean the end of not only his career but his life. Director Robert Mulligan is an extremely uneven director having helmed decent pictures like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, THE SPIRAL ROAD, UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE and BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL as well as sleepers like THE OTHER. But he's also had his share of clunkers like SUMMER OF '42. However, THE NICKEL RIDE is his masterpiece. Many of things that others seem to find fault with in the film is exactly what makes the picture so unpretentious and sublime. You really have to pay attention to the dialogue and interaction of characters to get the back story and relationships. Something that most viewers are either unable or unwilling to do. They want everything handed to them on a silver platter. The beauty of this film lies not only in the exceptional, low-key, non-showy performances from every single actor involved, but also the visceral evocation of the dying-on-the-vine area of downtown L.A. -- whole blocks of which have not changed much since the making of this film. Equally brilliant is the almost imperceptible building of suspense through the gradual ratcheting-up of understandable paranoia in Cooper's character. By the time of the climax the unseen aura of impending doom -- a feeling which is so borderline we're not sure if Cooper is right-on or is imagining the whole thing -- is really disturbing. There are a couple of violent shock sequences in the last third of the picture that really pack a wallop because of the orchestration of elements. As mentioned by someone else here at IMDb, THE NICKEL RIDE does take the same low-key genre approach as similar neo-noir FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE and HICKEY AND BOGGS -- and it stacks up very favorably alongside them, easily equaling their masterpiece status. Highly recommended. However, the movie was such a flop on initial release I doubt Fox will ever release it on DVD. But keep your eyes peeled because they do run it occasionally letterboxed on the Fox Movie cable channel.

(Spoiler Alert) If it wasn't for Jason Miller's smoldering performance as the troubled paranoid and eventually doomed L.A mobster Cooper the movie "The Nickel Ride" would just die on the screen as soon as the opening credits stopped rolling. Playing a low-level hood involved in the storage of stolen mob merchandise, at a warehouse complex that he runs in the city, Cooper is no longer of any use to his new mob bosses. Cooper's bosses now feel that his old ways of doing things is just not cutting it in this modern era of organized crime. After 19 years on the job and being the best at it Coop's days are numbered as the syndicated is now planning to have him retired permanently. With his immediate boss Carl, John Hllerman, feeding him this line of bull about how he's falling behind in his work and now his mob boss want an even bigger piece of his cut from his storage and selling business. Carl comes to an agreement with Cooper on his payoff to the head mobsters to be increased from $8,500.00 to just under $20,000.00.Things just don't seem to be going right for Cooper senses that somehow he's being set up for a "Hit" and all this talk about him not coming through for his mob bosses is really a diversion to keep him from realizing that. They don't really care how his operation, or block, is going they just want him to have Cooper drop his guard in order to have him whacked and then replaced. Cooper get a message, of sorts, when his friend Paulie, Lou Frizzeli, who manages boxer Tonozzi, Mark Gordon, ends up murdered because he couldn't get his boxer to throw a fight that the mob bet heavy on for Tonozzi to lose. Feeling he still has his "touch" with the mob bosses Cooper did his best to call the "Hit" on Paulie off. When he got the bad news about Paulie from the hoodlum who "Hit" him Bobby, Richard Evens, Cooper getting him alone on an elevator almost kills him! This convinced his bosses from Carl on up that he's not suitable in their new reconstructed business and has to go. Being introduced by Carl to his out-of-town driver Turner, Bo Hopkins, who's always in Cooper's face and obnoxious to the point where Cooper has nightmares about him being the "hit-man" sent by the new mob bosses to do him in. Cooper tries to get in touch with an old associate of his Elias, Bart Burns,to meet him outside of the city at his country home in a desperate attempt to stave off the "Hit" that he feels that's coming. In the end Cooper sees that all his fear and paranoia had some truth to it with Elias never showing up. With Cooper and his girlfriend Shara, Linda Haynes, now alone in the woods Turner, in Cooper's mind, seems to be behind every tree and ready to finish him as well as Shara off. Surreal and dark thriller that has a number of fine twists and turns in it but it's obvious from the start that the dye was cast and Cooper was to become history by the time the movie ends. There were a number of off-beat moments in the film that didn't seem to make much sense with a dream sequence involving Turner at Cooper's country home that to me came across like an alternate ending that was left in the movie by its director by mistake. The actual ending in the film with Turner and Cooper at his office in L.A was also very hard to accept since it made the sly and methodical Turner come across unbelievably unprofessional as a professional hit-man.