PimpinAinttEasy A painfully slow noir (?) flick. Jason Miller (The Exorcist) plays an aging insomniac gangster who lays in bed staring into space. He manages local warehouses where the mob stores their stuff. We are treated to scenes from his daily life. His relationship with his wife played by the beautiful Linda Hayes. A birthday party at a local bar. And then we learn that he is out of favor with his boss and that they could be trying to ease him out of the business. It's all very vague. We are not supposed to understand all of it. There was a problem with the sound on the print that I watched. I couldn't really understand what was going on all the time. It is set in a really ugly town with many seedy bars and joints.The Nickel Ride reminded me of Michael Mann's Thief with its themes of the domestication of a gangster and the horror of middle age. The brooding Jason Miller is terrific. Its a shame that he was working in the wrong decade when Hollywood had so many great actors.Victor French is great in a supporting role as miller's friend. I'm glad I watched it. I don't know if i'll watch it again.(6.5/10)

mgtbltp LA Smog Noir, circa 1974Cooper "Coop", is a small but successful cog in the LA underworld. He on top of his world, He is a fence, receiving stolen goods which he stores in the various warehouses around 5th Street in downtown LA. He is known as the "Key Man" for the large ring of keys he always carries. Business is booming, and there is a serious shortage of storage space.The film begins at night, a tractor-trailer backs up to a loading dock. The hijackers pile out and a hood in a seersucker suit and straw hat beats on the sliding steel door of a warehouse as the rest of the crew unload the goods. The watchman opens up the door and tells the hood in the seersucker there is no room.Cooper has been cobbling a deal to get "the block" a very large brick warehouse complex, 400,000 square feet, with rail spurs, comprising nineteen addresses, that sits on a full city block down in the 5th and Alameda district. It will be "like Grand Central Station". The word is out that the old street boss is losing control, if he doesn't deliver this block, 5th Street goes down the toilet and he'll go with it. The deal is in limbo because crooked LAPD official Elias and his downtown cronies are dragging ****, wanting more juice. Cooper's immediate boss Carl is putting pressure on him to get it done. Carl's bosses are a new breed, razor cuts, bookkeepers and lawyers who don't understand the streets.Carl also has Coop lean on boxing manager Paulie. He wants, to have boxer Tonozzi, who has been making a bit of a comeback, take one last dive in his next bout. When Tonozzi doesn't deliver, Carl thinks Coop is slipping. Coop tells Paulie to leave town but Carl's goons get to him first. Carl also hires a goofy looking enforcer named Turner, a quasi hippy-ish, off-putting hayseed imported from Texas who wears a cowboy hat and boots with denim bell bottom jeans and a jacket embroidered with flowers on the front and a marijuana leaf on the back.Coop has been on the job for 19 years, an ex carney, con man who worked his way West to LA then up the crime ladder. He has a live in gal pal Sarah who was working as a keno gal in Vegas when he found her, but in one sequence she demonstrates some bumps and grinds to Coop and his long time friend Paddie, the owner of the local bar. Coop's become a respected and loved 5th street neighborhood fixture, his friends and the patrons of Paddie's even throw him a surprise birthday party. This respect and love proves his undoing, the new breed of crook wants to rule on fear and brutality and Coop is coming to the end of his nickel ride.Jason Miller is practically a double for Charles McGraw without the gravelly voice, there are some great believable performances here from Victor French (who you won't recognize) he comes off as an interesting mix of Art Carney and Walter Matthau, and from Linda Haynes the small town born, ex Vegas showgirl. The side story of Coop and Sarah and their affection for each other is well done. John Hillerman is the "Hollywood-ish" mob under-boss, and Bo Hopkins is outlandish as the politely creepy "Cadillac Cowboy" hit man. This film builds slowly in tension much like Night And The City (1950) does.The noir-ish cinematography is excellent, emphasizing gritty, smoggy, downtown LA, an LA that's slowly succumbing to high rises and parking lots, but it also is juxtaposed by nicely composed 2.35 : 1 widescreen closeups and also throws in a sequence reminiscent of the Big Bear Lake segment featured in the Van Heflin-Robert Ryan Noir Act Of Violence (1948) The subtle soundtrack nicely compliments the storyline. 8-9/10.

John Seal Late actor Jason Miller is best remembered (on the rare occasions he IS remembered) for his exemplary performance as Father Karras in William Friedkin's The Exorcist, but he deserves better. Gritty drama The Nickel Ride features him in perhaps the finest performance of his career as Cooper, a low-level LA hoodlum whose hold on his assigned section of town is being threatened by the arrival of new punk Turner (Bo Hopkins). It's a surprisingly complex tale of one man's slow realization that he may no longer be at the top of his game, and features very impressive widescreen cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth. Look for Magnum P.I. regular John Hillerman (you know, the dapper guy with the neat little moustache) as Cooper's boss Carl.

David Isaac Tam 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.