Review: The Pickup Squanders The Talents Of Its Stars

Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson fumble the passing of the torch in this lackluster action comedy.

Veteran armoured car guard Russell Pierce (Eddie Murphy) is teamed up with slacker new guy Travis Stolly (Pete Davidson), a wannabe cop whose irreverent attitude irks the older hand to no end. Russell just wants a smooth run collecting cash from various banks on their route – it’s his 25th wedding anniversary and he’s keen to get home to his wife, Natalie (Eva Longoria). Unfortunately, they’re ambushed by a robbery crew.

Which is par for the course: mismatched buddy team thrown into crisis. Things get complicated when it eventuates that the criminal mastermind is Keke Palmer‘s Zoe, who milked Davidson’s Travis for inside info during a one night stand. Things get further complicated when it turns out she has a larger scheme to take a casino for $60m, and an audience-friendly reason for doing so. But things never get interesting.

The Pickup very much plays to formula, but the formula fails to effervesce. Director Tim Story (Barbershop, two Fantastic Four films) handles things with mechanical professionalism, doing what he can to inject some sense of stakes or momentum to what is a plodding and unengaging script by Matt Mider and
Kevin Burrows. There’s no sense of peril, even when Miguel and Banner (Jack Kesy and Ismael Cruz Córdova) a couple of aggrieved former gangmates who Zoe left for dead, come gunning for payback and profit.

Worse, there’s no chemistry between the leads. This kind of thing lives or dies on the strength of the interplay between its central pair, and you’d think that wouldn’t be an issue here. Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson are both Saturday Night Live veterans, and Murphy at least has the likes of 48 Hours and Trading Places under his belt. Here he’s trapped in the straight man role, playing the gruff authority figure to Davidson’s agent of chaos, and it does him no favours.

For all that, The Pickup isn’t terrible – it’s merely forgettable. A pretty stacked cast does what it can to lift the material, but this one is strictly filler.

The Pickup is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.