The Nickel Ride is a 1974 American neo-noir[2] crime film directed and produced by Robert Mulligan and starring Jason Miller, Linda Haynes, Victor French, Bo Hopkins, and John Hillerman.

In Los Angeles, Cooper is a "key-man" (fence) for a local crime boss, operating a series of warehouses used as storage facilities for stolen and illicit goods.

Cooper is ordered by his boss Carl to fix a boxing match, after their resident fixer Paulie failed to get the fighters to take a dive.

After a surprise birthday party, Cooper is taken by Carl and his bodyguard Bobby to one of the prospective warehouses, where he is ordered to finish the deal by Saturday.

The project began with a screenplay written by Eric Roth called Fifty-Fifty which concerned a low-level crime boss who grows paranoid on the verge of his fiftieth birthday.

[4] Mulligan selected the project as his follow-up to The Other after he had briefly been considered to direct Taxi Driver with Jeff Bridges in the starring role of Travis Bickle.

[5] At the last minute, Scott dropped out of the project, and the role of Cooper was filled by Jason Miller, fresh off his acclaim for The Exorcist.

The film was predominantly shot on location in downtown Los Angeles, with Big Bear used for the scenes set at the lakeside cabin and the Rosslyn Hotel used as Cooper's office and apartment.

He "loved" Robert Mulligan as a director, and gave him credit for the handling of the climactic strangulation sequence, although Hopkins also admitted that it was tough scene to shoot and that the whole film was difficult to work on.

Director Robert Mulligan cut the movie down, eliminating in the process the character of Cooper's younger brother Larry, played by Brendan Burns.

In response, the marketing campaign was retooled before the film's gradual release to the rest of the U.S., but The Nickel Ride ultimately disappeared without finding a sizable audience.

Jason Miller plays a neighborhood fixer who is attempting to lease a warehouse for the storage of stolen goods; however, the deal is delayed, and he's threatened by the minor hoods who are his clients.

We watch him worrying in profile, in full and three-quarter face, standing or sitting or lying down, in daylight and darkness, on the phone, in his office and out of doors.

All in all, he seems more vulnerable to an anxiety attack than to an assailant's bullet...The Nickel Ride is handsomely filmed in bleak pastels, but the numerous close-ups manage to stress the slowness of the action, and quick cuts can't dispel the tedium.

[11]Nick Pinkerton of The Village Voice was slightly more forgiving: "The Nickel Ride is a seldom-seen drama of white-collar workaday criminal drudgery to make you believe the best of '70s cinema will never fully be quarried out...The atmosphere is one of musty hallways, sour stomach, and looming late middle age with no retirement plan in sight.