Good concept, poorly executed.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Before he helmed his three most prominent films: "Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), "Never Say Never Again" (1983), and "RoboCop 2" (1990), director Irvin Kershner got his big-screen start with "Stake Out on Dope Street" in 1958. Kershner wrote this crime story with Andrew J. Fenady, who later scripted the John Wayne cattle western "Chism" (1970). Lensed in black & white by the incomparable Haskell Wexler of "Medium Cool" fame, with an atmospheric voice-over "Dragnet" style narration, this 82-minute melodrama concerns the loss of two pounds of uncut heroin after a drug bust. Los Angeles narcotics agents had arrested a white drug peddler carrying a satchel containing a can filled with two pounds of uncut heroin when they were fired on by assailants. The drug peddler died in the shooting, but he threw the satchel away. Nobody has any idea where the satchel landed, so both the police and the dope peddlers embark on a massive search for the heroin. Three teenagers-- Julian "Ves" Vespucci (Jonathon Haze), aspiring artist Jim Bowers (Yale Wexler) and bodybuilder Nick Raymond (Morris Miller)--discover the satchel and its content, but they aren't sure about the contents of the can. Initially, Julian throws it again, but when learn that it is heroin, they search high and low for it. Finally, they drive out to the city trash dump and stumble upon it. Meantime, the police send out their detectives roust anybody suspicious, while the underworld is doing the same thing but without to restraint. Nick turns his friends on to an older guy with a prison record, and he helps them see the heroin. It is only a matter of time until the cops catch up with both the teens and the criminals. The best scene deals with an oldster who once used heroin. He describes the nightmare that using heroin can induce. Naturally, the mob finds the teens and the drugs. Everything works out well in the long run. Most of the cast are unknowns. Nevertheless, Kershner keeps the action moving swiftly enough.

Los Angeles. A dope bust goes bad, cops killed, satchel with heroin is gone, tossed down a hillside by the dying mule.Ves (Haze) shacks with his pop above Connie's Grocery store. He uses the back store room as a sort of social club for himself and his buddies, Jim (Wexler) a budding artist, and Nick (Marlo) an ex high school athlete, weightlifter, and already has been boxer. They hang out at the local bowling alley where Jim has a girl Kathy (Dalton) who works the cash register.They are all pretty much stuck in dead end jobs, but they all have dreams.Ves has grocery delivery route. Drives a 1951 Plymouth Concord Suburban. He spots a satchel. Grabs it. Finishes route and heads back to the ranch. Jim and Nick are in the back, hanging out. Ves comes in drops satchel. They start goofing around. Time wasting. They finally check out the satchel. It's locked, It's heavy. They force the lock. It's woman's stuff. They check it out. Split it up. They toss a two pound can marked face powder around. Juggle it. Toss it back and forth. They make a basket in the trashcan. Score! Satchel may be worth something. Head for the swap shop. Score a few bucks. They split for the lanes. They bowl, play pinball, Jim gives Kathy some perfume, all is well, life goes on.Both mob and police are looking for the dope. The HEAT is on. Cops on prowl. Cops shakedown EVERYONE. The mob has muscle. The word is out. The mob leans on EVERYONE.The story slips out. It's headline news. Jim spots the story. Jim runs to store. Shows Ves and Nick. Crap! We're RICH! Where's the dope? Ves dumped it in the TRASH. Check the trash. It's GONE.The boys SCRAMBLE. Jump in the Concord. Mad DASH to the DUMP. Garbage trucks VOMIT. Rubbish in piles. The boys are diving through the loads. The landfill dozer is chugging. Against all odds they FIND it.Of course, being a noir, instead of turning it in they decide to sell it. They don't call it DOPE for nothing. Nick who has a bit of a wise guy bent, knows a junkie named Danny who hangs around the garage he works at. The boys go to see Danny. Danny lives in a tar paper shack. Danny was flying high on China White. Danny has crashed and burned.They wake him up. Danny is paranoid. Danny is leery. Nick shows Danny a bindle. Danny takes a taste. Danny WANTS it. Danny WANTS it BAD. Nicks says there is more. Nick says you sell it you get MORE. Danny says come back tonight. Deal is done. Danny DELIVERS. The boys are getting FAT. The Doe is rolling in. They begin to flash wads around. Everything's COOL, everything's good until it all goes BAD.The film has a great flashback sequence that occurs when Danny is telling Jim about the effects of horse and about the times he was busted put in jail and had to go cold turkey and suffered through horrendous agonizing effects of withdrawal. The cinematography is impressive, the Cold Turkey sequence is almost surrealistic. It's also well acted and narrated by Allen Kramer. This was Haskell Wexler's first feature film and it shows great promise. The film is adeptly directed by Irvin Kershner who went on to a long career in TV and film.The film functions quite well as a anti-heroin message that's also thoroughly entertaining. A nice little sleeper of a film, originally a Warners release. 7/10

"Stakeout on Dope Street" is a decent film when it comes to the plot idea, but nothing, I mean NOTHING, makes the film particularly compelling. It should have been a lot more interesting than it was.The film begins with a very gritty shootout--one where two cops are shot as well as one of the criminals. However, in the process, a briefcase full of pure, uncut heroin is lost. And, shortly afterwords, three young men discover the drugs and decide to get rich selling it. Two of the guys have no problem with this--but the third gets cold feet because he's worried about creating addicts just like the guy they hired to sell the stuff. However, once the guys start selling, it's inevitable that the guys who lost it will come looking.... If you want to find out what's next, see the film.While the plot idea sounds interesting, this low-budget film never excited me--and several times I found myself nodding off during the movie. It's not a terrible film--just not a very interesting one. See it if you'd like, but you could do better.

(There are Spoilers) Very probably the first movie coming out of Hollywood that addressed the drug epidemic on the streets of America with both street level smartness and native intelligence, among dealers users and police, in just how illegal drugs, in this case heroin, is both marketed and sold to it's many hooked and desperate customers.A stakeout on Cole Street, known as Dope Street among the dealers and police, goes bad with one of the cops Sgt. Matthews, Matt Resnick, and the arrested drug pusher Jerome Lake, Charles Guasti, ending up shot and killed in the ensuing crossfire. Lake not being able to make his escape, in that he's handcuffed to the dead Sgt. Matthews, throws the briefcase loaded with the drugs, a two pound can of uncut and pure heroin, into the bushes. This happens just moments before Lake is gunned down by Sgt. Matthew's partner Officer Donahue (Slate Harlow), and the police back-up, who's also seriously wounded in the shootout.Lake's partners Mitch Swardurski & Lenny Potter, Herman Rudin & Phllip Mansour, unable to retrieve the drugs or the suitcase, with the initials J.R.L stenciled on it, flee leaving it in the nearby bushes where it's found the next day by grocery delivery boy Julian "Vas" Vaspucci, Jonathon Haze. At his fathers grocery store Vas together with his two friends Jim Bowers & Nick Raymond, Yale Wexler & Steven Mario, open the suitcase finding samples of womens cosmetics and a strange two pound can of white powder, the pure heroin.Keping the cosmetics, Jim gives them as a present to his girlfriend Kathy(Abby Dalton), the three young men throw the valuable heroin away in the garbage thinking that it's worthless powder. It's only later after selling the empty suitcase to a local pawnbroker Samuel Alber, Edward Schaaf, the trio realize, by seeing the story of the Dope or Cole Street shootout in the newspapers, that they threw away a fortune in illegal drugs!Finding the missing can in the city dump the three now would be drug dealers get in touch with a middle man, a local heroin junkie, Danny played by Allen Kramer in order to first authenticate, by him using it, the heroin and then sell it to his friends splitting the take with his three partners in crime. What goes completely over the heads of Vas Jim and Nick, as well as Danny, is that both the mob headed by gangster Mr. Fennel, Herschel Bernardi, as well as police are out looking for them and the heroin. And in their case it would be a lot better if the cops instead of Mr. Fennel's boys got to them first!Harrowing story of greed as well as stupidity on the part of the three young men with the can of pure heroin who were way over their heads and didn't realize it until it was almost too late. The naive trio think that they can get rich by not only selling death on the streets without the say so and approval of mobster Mr. Fennel, whom the heroin belongs to, but with the pursuing cops breathing down their necks who are out to avenge the murder of one of their own, Sgt. Matthews,over the missing drugs. Working almost as a team the police and Fennel Mob slowly track down the three by finding the suitcases where the heroin came from at Alber's pawnshop. It's then that the Mob tracks down Danny who not realizing he's the only heroin pusher in town because, with him having the missing heroin, he's the only one who has any smack, or heroin, to sell!Predictable, but very exciting, and by the numbers final as Vas Nick and a very reluctant Jim, whom Kathy talked out this this drug dealing insanity, end up on the wrong side of the law as well as in the gun-sights of Mr. Fennel's hit men Swardurski & Potter. The final scene in a deserted L.A power plant has you on the edge of your seat in hoping that Jim, who's the one with the can of heroin, gets away from the two Mr. Fennel hit-men before they finish him off for good. But at the same time also knowing that if Jim, as well as his friends Vas and Nick, end up alive he'll have to pay for that brief moment of insanity in thinking that dealing drugs is a swell way to get rich; rich off the sufferings and deaths of those that he sells the drugs to.