Like Dirty Harry, The Line Up is a San Francisco thriller, making great use of the city's locations (well before it was fashionable). The plot, about a beat-the-clock dope bust, develops under Siegel's crisp direction, never missing a beat, building up to what is still considered the most exciting car chase ever filmed.
“I try to make escapes, chases, as hairy as I can. A near-miss is more exciting than one that's quite far. It was a wild chase. That shot in which the car comes to a sudden stop at the edge of the unfinished freeway was no trick shot. That was a five-story drop. The stunt man who drove the car, Guy Way, had to be part insane. His girlfriend was in the car with him. She was hysterical for days.” --Don Siegel.
The renegade this time is Eli Wallach, a professional gunman (read: psychopathic killer): “The film consistently demonstrates Siegel's attitude to the psychopath, the criminal, the ‘outsider'; at one point the dialogue tentatively offers a summation when Julian (Robert Keith)...(states) ‘Crime is aggressive...so is the law. You don't understand the criminal's need for violence.'” --David Austen, Films & Filming