This week, the Film Sack crew reviews the 70’s “trucker type” hit movie Convoy. This trail blazing film, directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Kris Kristofferson, Ernest Borgnine, Ali MacGraw and my personal favorite Burt Young, delivers on the trucker goods and makes it easy to see why the years following it’s release spawned more cops v. road people movies.
Convoy’s story revolves around “Rubber Duck” (Kristofferson) who is going about his trucker business when a run in with the law snowballs into a race to the US/Mexico border that builds into a Convoy along the way and ends with one heck of an explosive face off.
Oh yeah, Did I mention the whole story is based on a trucker song of the same name “Convoy” by C.W. McCall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdc0Oq1VwH4
Overall, I would say I enjoyed this movie. Despite the fact that the aspect ratio was not right on Netflix streaming for this particular film. Most likely this was due to a poor film to tape conversion that was handed down to Netflix by the studio. I would recommend getting the DVD version over streaming this movie until they fix this.
There were some pretty good performances in this movie. Especially by Burt Young, who seemed to have more heart than any of the other truckers. Ernest Borgnine was real easy to hate as the primary antagonist cop. Ali McGraw provided some nice eye candy along with an ok performance and Kris Kristofferson had the looks to pull off a gritty trucker but seemed a little flat in place but did come across as honest and believable.
The CB/Trucker talk was fun for about 5 minutes and then I just started to tune it out. But an interesting look into the whole CB culture at that time. “10W-40 Good Buddy….Hey wait a minute…you ain’t no trucker!!”
Most of the shots were well filmed and I’m sure posed a lot of problems at the time trying to film a whole convoy of moving trucks. Some cheating was attempted in a few scenes that failed. Like when you would only see 1 or 2 trucks on screen where there should have been 10 or 20.
Overall. I would give this film a 6 out 10. It was a pretty good ride but nothing to really sink your teeth into.
Another film in the sack!
Film Sack 25 “The One About Convoy”
