Some titles sound like a shrug before the movie even starts. The Pickup is one of those. It promises a light glide through a familiar action comedy and delivers an empty routine that slips right through your fingers. What lingers is not laughter or excitement. It is a vague sense of waste. So much talent, so little spark. I finished it and felt oddly lonely, the way you do after a party where everyone you like was in the same room and still nobody truly connected.
Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson lead the thing. On paper that pairing sounds like a fun crash of energies. The cool master sitting next to the live wire kid, each pushing the other to a brighter place. Not here. The script sits between them like a locked door. They move through scenes as if they only met an hour earlier, which I guess in the story is sort of true. You never feel any rhythm take hold. Their timing does not mesh. Their banter dies quietly. It is a strange thing to watch two people who are each charismatic on their own slow each other down.
The rest of the ensemble fills out the poster with names that should click. Keke Palmer plays the heist mastermind. Eva Longoria is the long suffering spouse who tries to give the story a home. Even Andrew Dice Clay shows up for a few minutes of corporate barking. And then, a bit later, Marshawn Lynch drops by for a quick visit. He is in and out before you know it. But he leaves a trace of life behind him. The movie earns the tiniest little star next to its name because he shows up and does what he always does. He walks on camera and you perk up. Then he is gone.
The real problem sits at the writing desk. Kevin Burrows and Matt Mider piece together a heist plot that sounds clever in a room and plays messy in motion. Characters behave in ways that fit the next gag or the next chase instead of matching anything that felt true a minute ago. The logic that should lock a caper together keeps rattling loose. You can make a goofy romp and ask us to go with the flow. That is fine. But you still need cause and effect. You need momentum. You need to make me think that a clock is ticking even when I cannot see it. This script tells you a clock is ticking and then forgets to wind it.
Tim Story directs with a sure sense of coverage. The man knows where to put the camera and how to keep things moving. He has done this dance before. Barbershop had heart. Ride Along found laughs inside the car and outside it. Here the machine never turns joyful. He gives you the action clean enough to follow. The jokes arrive on time. The problem is they just slide off the surface. It is like watching a skillful DJ spin a set when the songs are not very good. You admire the transitions. You do not dance.
Let me back up and walk through what this all is. Murphy and Davidson play security guards in New Jersey who work for an armored truck company. Murphy is Russell, a stoic guy who wants the simple life after years on the job. His dream is to retire and open a small bed and breakfast with his wife Natalie. Longoria plays her with a forced spice that the film leans on too hard. She deserves a real person to play. The movie hands her a handful of winks and tells her to sell it. We hear over and over that it is their 25th anniversary. That bit keeps coming back like a reminder note someone taped to the script. There is also a small thread about her wedding ring that is meant to carry a little weight. It does not. It floats away every time the story needs a chase.
Davidson is Travis. He is immature and impulsive which is the polite way of saying he keeps doing foolish things because the plot wants jolts. The opening bank scene lays it on thick. He shows off. He fumbles. He talks when he should not. Then the movie adds the wrinkle that he is secretly a math whiz and he dreams of joining the police. The dude is brilliant but he hides it under a pile of quirks. That kind of character can be fun. Here it plays like someone dumped a bag of traits on the table and forgot to assemble them into a person.
It is the first day that Russell and Travis ride together. A setup like that should play a buddy rhythm where both men reveal their values under pressure. Instead everything that can go wrong goes wrong because the script pulls the wrong levers. A crew of high tech crooks hijacks the truck. Their leader is Zoe, played by Palmer who steps into frame with confidence. She has seduced Travis before the story really gets going to pry loose some key details about the route and the system. He is too smitten to see the angles. It is meant to be funny that he cannot tell she is using him. It is mainly frustrating. By the end the film wants you to believe they might have a real romantic shot. No they do not.
The actual hijack is the best stretch in the whole thing. For a few minutes you feel the rush this genre can give. There are some neat touches with dye packs that spray a wall of color. You sit up a little straighter. Then the scene talks itself to death. We are told these men and women have found a hundred mile strip of road near Atlantic City where there are no other cars in broad daylight and no cell phone signal at all. Sure. Maybe on Mars. I do not need realism to measure to the inch. I do need the movie not to poke me in the forehead while it asks for a straight face.
The twist is that the thieves do not want the cargo. They want the armored truck itself. They plan to drive it into a casino and use it like a VIP key to touch the real money. The take is sixty million in cash waiting around on a Monday after weekend gamblers drop their stacks. The script tries to layer in a personal reason for Zoe to target that place on that day. It should add emotional heft. Instead it feels bolted on. The caper has no flavor. Ocean’s Eleven is not the point of comparison. It is the aspiration the film keeps whispering at and never approaches.
All the while the clock is supposed to be ticking. You can hear the words tick and tock in the dialogue. But you never feel it in your chest. Stakes in stories are not about how many times someone says the word urgent. They are about how much we care. Russell wants to make it home to his wife. Travis wants to become more than the sum of his jittery edges. Zoe wants to settle a score and prove she is the smartest person in the room. Those are simple clean drivers. The movie keeps interrupting them with filler and then tries to sprint to catch up.
Murphy moves through the picture with a distant air. Every once in a while he hits a note that is familiar. A flash of exasperation. A voice that leans into a rhythm only he has. These are the tiniest reminders of a legend who can electrify a room with a glance. They do not elevate the film. They point back to a past that the movie cannot touch. It is almost sad. He is there, but he is not invited to explode. He just checks boxes and makes it to the next setup.
Davidson stays in his usual high energy lane. He has a natural ability to make lines bounce around his mouth and find unexpected little beats. The humor here forces him into a loud register when the scenes are asking for tone that is softer or darker. A lot of his punch lines arrive at the wrong temperature. He is not helped by the way Travis is written. The character combines bravado and genius in a way that never feels earned. So the jokes fall back on mugging. After a while it gets tiring.
Palmer holds her ground whenever the camera gives her enough time to breathe. You can sense a commanding presence trying to break out. She is all surface though, because that is all the script gives her. There is the big plan. There is the cool stare. There is the hint of a backstory that is supposed to explain the target. None of it coalesces. She sparks. The fuse never catches. Longoria does her best to anchor Russell to something warm. She is stuck playing a stereotype. Saucy is not a personality. Wife is not a job.
The most dispiriting moment comes during a scene where Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay stand around trading information like two characters in a training video. It just sits there. These are men who once pushed boundaries for a living. They were dangerous. They could make a room gasp and then howl. Now they are moving through a policy briefing. You can almost see the payroll slip.
If you take the movie as a time killer in the background, it does not even serve that purpose. There are shows and films that you can put on while you fold your laundry. You look up every few minutes, smile, and then keep doing your thing. This one makes noise without offering any comfort. Silence would be better. That sounds harsh, and maybe I am being tough, but that is how it felt.
It is heading straight to Prime Video. That is not a judgment by itself. Plenty of strong features open at home now. The format can even be a blessing for a small story or a weird one. The Pickup is neither small nor weird. It is the most familiar shape. An action comedy with a heist and a mismatched duo and a love angle that hopes you will forgive it for not making sense because it is just kidding around. But if you want an easy watch, you still need a pulse. You need chemistry. You need a plan that stands up to the light. This thing flickers on and off and then fades out.
I kept thinking about the pieces. The idea of an armored truck being used as the key to break a casino seems like the kind of crooked pitch a movie could build a whole identity around. Imagine the pressure cooker inside a casino’s back corridors. Picture the thousand tiny systems that run a gaming floor. There is drama in there. There is humor too. But the script never dives. It skims. So when the final act needs to hit hard, it lands with a soft thud.
There are isolated bits that work if you pluck them out and look at them alone. The dye pack flourish. A tossed off line here and there that lands because Davidson can still curve a word at the last second. A look from Murphy that cuts through the haze. Palmer adjusting a plan when a door closes. And of course that quick Marshawn Lynch cameo. He walks in and you smile because his presence is so unforced. It is like someone opened a window for a second and let real air in.
Maybe that is the hardest part here. You can see the movie that might have been. The friend picture where a veteran guard on the edge of retirement gets stuck with a chaos agent, and under fire they somehow find a new version of themselves. The heist puzzle where the odd detail of a truck becomes the ticket to a giant score. The romance that plays with the weird idea of attraction surviving deception and danger and comes out cracked but honest. All of that is within reach. And it keeps slipping away.
There is a point in the second half when the film tries to push everything into overdrive. The music kicks up. The editing gets choppier. There are quick inserts. People are shouting. The clock is definitely ticking now, the story insists. But without a foundation it just turns into a whirl. Urgency is not volume. It is clarity. Give me a map and a reason, and I will lean in. Give me a blur, and I will lean back.
I do not want to pile on. Comedy is hard. Action is hard. Balancing a tone that lets both live together is one of the trickiest moves in the medium. Tim Story has pulled off that balance before. He has. But a director needs words that carry intention and characters who make decisions that make sense at least to themselves. No amount of clean coverage or slick pacing can replace that.
In the end what I felt most was disappointment. Not anger. Not even real annoyance. Just that soft letdown when talented artists show up and only give you the outline of a good night. You exit the movie and shrug. You forget most of it by the time you get to the kitchen. You may remember one line, a glance, a splash of color. You might think of Lynch and grin. Then it all drifts away.
If you love Eddie Murphy, and I do, this will not change your mind. He is still a giant. If you have enjoyed Pete Davidson in spurts, you will see the same sparks again and wish they lit something. If Keke Palmer always seems like she is about to break into a bigger more dangerous level of stardom, this will not be the film that does it. Eva Longoria deserves parts with more depth. Andrew Dice Clay deserves scenes with a little danger.
The Pickup could have been a breezy throwaway that you recommend to a friend for a quiet Friday. Instead it is a forgettable loop that flickers and fades. One star for the brief burst of Marshawn Lynch and for the glimmer you get when you squint and imagine what this cast might do in a script that respected them. As it stands, the movie is a shrug with a title. It is there. It plays. It ends. And quiet sounds better after it is over.
