A feeling of sparseness permeates Tim Story’s new action-comedy “The Pickup.” You see it in the small cast, the desolate settings, and the meager production values. If this movie were a western, then these elements might play to the film’s favor. But as an action-comedy starring Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson, and Keke Palmer, it all reeks of overbearing cheapness to where we’re left to wonder why anyone would bother. There are no B-movie thrills to be had, nor an exchange of budget for subversive ideas. It’s like a Roger Corman movie without the down-and-dirty element. Instead, it plays like the Temu version of better buddy-comedy action films where no human hands touched it during production, and then in falls apart the moment you look at it funny.
Russell (Murphy) and Travis (Davidson) are security guards for an armored truck company. The two don’t particularly like each other, but their boss Clark (Andrew Dice Clay) pairs them together for the day’s pickups. Russell just wants the day to be over so he can get home to his wife (Eva Longoria) for their 25th wedding anniversary, and Travis hopes that this guard job can be a stopgap towards working as a cop, which is what his family of cops expects of him. However, unbeknownst to Travis, his new girlfriend Zoe (Keke Palmer) is using him as an inside man to learn his route and execute a heist. When the pair of guards manage to shake Zoe’s cohorts but not her, she conscripts them into her criminal enterprise. The two bickering guys try to figure out how much they can trust Zoe and how hard they should struggle to get out of this mess.
There are the briefest glimmers here of why you’d even bother to watch this movie in the first place. Murphy gets in some good zings, Davidson can play endearingly obtuse, and Keke Palmer can’t help but be charismatic. But neither the script nor Story’s direction really gives anyone much of a chance to shine. So much of the movie is confined to the interiors of the armored truck, and Story’s camera is always just trying to keep up with the speaker rather than provide any space for a comic beat to land. Even when the trio isn’t inside the truck, there’s little for them to do or a situation that would make the most of their skills. Instead, we’re treated to a bevy of exaggerated facial expressions peppered with the occasional action beat.
The action itself also struggles because of how empty everything feels. Even with the benefit of stuntpeople hanging off the front of cars, the larger framing still lacks a punch. You have an armored truck surrounded by Zoe’s two vehicles on an open stretch of Georgia highway (the film is meant to take place around New York City and New Jersey, but it’s clearly Georgia). There are no other vehicles, no larger risks, and little sense of geography beyond the three cars. It’s technically an action scene, but one that gives no sense of excitement, especially when you scale it down to televisions and handheld devices for the Prime Video audience.
“The Pickup” can never escape the sense that it’s algorithmic filler. It’s meant not so much to entertain as something for autoplay to select after you’ve finished watching “Beverly Hills Cop” or “Nope.” But once you open it up, you see it’s nowhere near as good as its stars or even its simple premise would lead you to believe. Its best chance at “success” is hoping that autoplay sends it to someone’s screen and the viewer is too indifferent to hit the stop button. Decades ago, cheap knock-offs still aspired for some entertainment value, and it’s bizarre to see a company as wealthy as Amazon so indifferent towards the movies it chooses to make. The talent will take the paycheck, and based on their past work, they’ve earned it. But for a film about a heist, the real robbery is thinking that this is worth anyone’s time or money.