Remembered foremost for his television work on the buddy cop series STARSKY & HUTCH, David Soul stars in an altogether different odd couple story in THE STICK UP. Soul plays a displaced American in England who has an armored car job all lined up with three Brits, but along the way he gets attached to a diner waitress running away from a dead-end situation, played by Pamela McMyler. Whereas Soul butted heads often as Hutch with his pal Starsky, his relationship with McMyler's Rosie is a bit more contentious. Neither one is honest and forthright, but together their deficiencies might erode and a positive union could be the end result.
STORY ($$$): The script doesn't really offer anything new, for it's the standard romantic-comedy with crime mixed in. Soul's Duke must decide whether the love of Rosie is more valuable to him than the riches transported in the armored car he's determined to rob. There are some nice comedic elements in the story, with the banter between Soul and McMyler typically entertaining.
ACTING ($$$$): STARSKY & HUTCH began as a quality buddy cop series, but as the show evolved, it went cheeseball and the stories were low-rent. I always got the impression that Soul didn't like the direction the series went, and his acting in the later episodes suffered for it. In THE STICK UP, however, David shines, giving a brilliant, standout performance as a man determined to make it, albeit in an underhanded manner. His attitude changes as he begins to realize the attachment he has with Rosie is something akin to connubial. Pamela McMyler is an absolute treat as Rosie, who can be a frank Irish spitfire one minute and a meek damsel the next. She gets plenty material to shine in the script, from pasting a meddlesome child with mashed potatoes to her outrageous mud wrestling scene with a woman twice her size. The fear and trepidation Pamela expresses upon meeting the Amazon will make you laugh, but you'll be left in stitches when she looses her spitfire in the ring, scratching and pulling her opponent's hair!
SEX/NUDITY ($): There's a bathing in the river scene after the mud wrestling exposition with Soul & McMyler denuding, but it's tasteful and certainly not gratuitous.
STORY ($$$): The script doesn't really offer anything new, for it's the standard romantic-comedy with crime mixed in. Soul's Duke must decide whether the love of Rosie is more valuable to him than the riches transported in the armored car he's determined to rob. There are some nice comedic elements in the story, with the banter between Soul and McMyler typically entertaining.
ACTING ($$$$): STARSKY & HUTCH began as a quality buddy cop series, but as the show evolved, it went cheeseball and the stories were low-rent. I always got the impression that Soul didn't like the direction the series went, and his acting in the later episodes suffered for it. In THE STICK UP, however, David shines, giving a brilliant, standout performance as a man determined to make it, albeit in an underhanded manner. His attitude changes as he begins to realize the attachment he has with Rosie is something akin to connubial. Pamela McMyler is an absolute treat as Rosie, who can be a frank Irish spitfire one minute and a meek damsel the next. She gets plenty material to shine in the script, from pasting a meddlesome child with mashed potatoes to her outrageous mud wrestling scene with a woman twice her size. The fear and trepidation Pamela expresses upon meeting the Amazon will make you laugh, but you'll be left in stitches when she looses her spitfire in the ring, scratching and pulling her opponent's hair!
SEX/NUDITY ($): There's a bathing in the river scene after the mud wrestling exposition with Soul & McMyler denuding, but it's tasteful and certainly not gratuitous.