Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

03 June 2008

Convoy dir. Sam Peckinpah (1978)

STEVE says:
I have to admit, we turned The Wild Bunch off after what felt like the first six hours, but after Convoy, I'm thinking of revisiting it.

I love Straw Dogs, I think Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a bit of genius, and Convoy - which I expected to be no more than a 90 minute chase scene - turned out to be kind of, well, fun, and rather highly politically motivated, which came as a surprise as well. I look at The Wild Bunch and I think, "Hey, maybe it was me." There's a reason it's so revered, right? I mean, where would we be without the slow-mo operatic violence of Sam Peckinpah?

Overall, Convoy wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, either. Fun, enjoyable, but not necessarily a classic the caliber of the others. Worth noting, though, is the fact that this is the first movie we've watched that's based on a song. So it gets an extra half-point for that distinction.

2/5

NIKKI says:
You just watch movies like this thinking about how it's never going to be this way again. They just do not make movies like this anymore. Or like Smokey and the Bandit or White Lightning or Cannonball Run or like anything Burt Reynolds was ever in driving a car.

This is a love story about trucks, and at one point, there's even a scene which feels like truck-porn. It fades in and out on the trucks while some sort of classical music piece plays. Like the trucks are doing ballet. The ballet-dancers of the road. It's very strange. And there are broads who fuck in truck cabins and tubby sheriffs who just want to get that Rubber Duck varmint.

The social and political undertones were good -- probably adding smarts to this one that perhaps Smokey lacked. Still, the bar brawl scene is way overdone, and I still don't really know if I liked any of the main characters. But that's this kind of movie, I guess. It's about egos and dignity, broads and short dresses, life on the road in the '70s.

Can someone make me a Wayback Machine?

3/5