The Nickel Ride (1974)
Directed by Robert Mulligan

Film Review

When it was first released in 1975 (having premiered the previous year at the Cannes Film Festival), The Nickel Ride, Robert Mulligan's first foray into film noir thriller territory, was ill-received both by the critics and by audiences.  To date, it remains one of the director's most overlooked and underrated films although it was to prove influential in the development of the neo-noir in subsequent years and is arguably one of the finest examples of the genre to come out of an American film studio.  In common with its hardboiled 1940s counterpart, The Nickel Ride offers a brooding excursion into America's criminal underworld in which its central protagonist, superbly portrayed by Jason Miller, is caught up in a hopeless one-man war against an insuperable and ruthless opponent.  The story is familiar but Mulligan, one of the great auteurs of American cinema, gives it a whole new spin.

What is perhaps most interesting about The Nickel Ride is the way in which it takes the familiar film noir motifs - the shadowy urban landscape, the seedy gangster hangouts, the taciturn hero, etc. - and gives these a recognisably modern (circa 1970s) makeover.  Compared with the stylisation of the classic American film noir thrillers of the 1940s, The Nickel Ride has a scorching realist quality, which persists even in its more surreal moments and heightens its tangible aura of menace and impending doom.  The plot has little to commend it but the world that Mulligan conjures up, one that vividly reflects the escalating paranoia of the main protagonist, is both spellbinding and terrifying.  The understated mise-en-scène and lumbering pace of the first two-thirds of the film create a false illusion of everyday normality that is savagely torn to shreds in the dramatic final third when the perspective shifts to that of a man anticipating his own brutal extinction.

The intense humanist streak that can be found in much of the director's work (notably To Kill A Mockingbird, The Other and The Man in the Moon) is also keenly felt in the main protagonist's struggle with his conscience and his desperate desire to live an ordinary life with the woman he loves.  In both its subject matter and style, The Nickel Ride is much closer to the existential French polar of the 1970s (specifically the néo-polar) than to comparable American thrillers of its time, and this could explain why the film is more highly regarded (and better known) in France than in the country where it was made.  A meticulously crafted study in alienation and fear, The Nickel Ride deserves to be considered a masterpiece, although its present obscurity prevents it from being seen as such, which is a great shame.

Film Synopsis

Cooper is a middle-aged crime boss who successfully manages a number of warehouses in Los Angeles which store stolen goods.  He is a popular figure on the street but he senses that his superiors are beginning to doubt his suitability for his present role.  When a deal to expand his territory goes awry Cooper becomes convinced that he is being set up for a fall.  He escapes to a lakeside retreat with his young wife Sarah but soon realises that a hitman is on his tail.  As paranoia takes him over, Cooper makes one last ditch attempt to redeem himself.  Unfortunately, his bosses have already made up their mind that his usefulness is at an end...