The Pickup delivers a middling mix of action and comedy, courtesy of Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson. A few jokes land, but most of the humor here is little more than Pete Davidson’s character making his 20th sexual reference. Violence and harsh profanity likewise steer this vehicular comedy off the road.
Russell hoped he might be home in time for his 25th wedding anniversary. Now, he might not get home at all.
Russell’s boss cruelly placed the armored truck driver on the Swedesboro loop, a long stretch of road with sketchy cell service that takes nine hours to complete on a good day. Even worse, the guard assigned to go with him is a new hire named Travis. He’s a police academy flunk-out who couldn’t be bothered to show up on time because he was too busy having a one-night stand with a stranger named Zoe.
No matter. It’ll be a long day of transporting money and expensive artifacts to their destinations, but Russell’s had worse days.
But then they enter the long stretch of cell-signal dead zone. Not long afterwards, a couple of cars pull up alongside and in front of them. A woman pops out of the car’s sunroof, holding a sign for them to read.
“Pull over, and you won’t get hurt.”
It won’t be long before Travis realizes she’s the same woman he had been with the night before.
We hear a story about a man who voluntarily sacrificed his life to save others.
Someone says, “See you in hell.” Travis describes Zoe as the devil. There’s a reference to black magic.
We see Travis in his underwear and Zoe in her bra. We also see Zoe in a bikini. While we don’t actually see Travis and Zoe’s sexual encounter, we hear many later conversations about it. Zoe asks Travis to strip down, and he thinks it’s because she wants to have sex. Travis offers to allow someone to have sex with his twin sister if he lets him go free.
Zoe propositions Travis for sex. We hear crude references to various sexual acts and body parts. Travis celebrates with friends the length of time he lasted in bed. He also occasionally gyrates and thrusts to simulate sex, and he mentions being aroused. He likewise makes many sexual quips. A background song references BDSM.
Male and female couples kiss. Travis offers information about the size of an animal’s genitals.
A man gets run over, and we hear sickening crunches as he dies. Someone else gets shot in the leg onscreen before being executed offscreen. We see a few others get shot, too. Someone takes the butt of a gun to the head, which knocks him to the ground.
One person gets thrown out of a car. Travis and Russell fight through tear gas. We see many cars crash and flip over throughout the course of the movie. A few cars explode. Men cover others in gasoline, intent on burning them alive. Someone rips out a woman’s earring, and another woman is knocked out. We hear about a man who shot himself in the foot.
We hear more than 80 instances of the f-word (including a handful paired with “mother”). We also hear the s-word nearly 60 times. Other frequent vulgarities include “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d-ck,” “d–n,” “douchebag,” “h—” and “p-ss.” God’s name is used in vain 10 times, including twice with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is likewise taken in vain once.
A man yells out a word in Spanish for female genitalia. We see crude hand gestures.
Travis gets drunk on a date. Other people drink alcohol. Someone calls a location a “meth lab on wheels.”
Travis passes gas. Someone launders money.
Like the awkward car ride presented early in the film, there’s not too much to say about The Pickup, a movie which feels appropriately marketed as a straight-to-streaming release.
The Prime Video release sees Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson playing polar opposite characters as they attempt to keep criminals from stealing the contents of their armored vehicle—at least, that’s true for the first half of the movie. The second half exits the interstate for a different kind of story entirely. That secondary story comes at the hands of Keke Palmer’s character, who quite literally grabs the wheel to spin the plot for her personal motivations.
But regardless of which story we’re watching, the constant here is Davidson’s uncanny ability to turn any sentence into a sexual reference. The poor guy just can’t stop the waterfall of intrusive thoughts from spilling out of his mouth—even when baddies are mere seconds away from putting a bullet into them. And the frequent and harsh language on the ride quickly grows tiresome, too.
This action comedy has its moments, both in spectacle and in the few quips that do land. But The Pickup won’t be a movie that your family will want to pick up for a family movie night—or any other night, for that matter.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
