Mein Name ist Gator

I am not a man of many traditions, but I like to keep the few ones that I do have intact. One of those traditions is that I pay tribute to a deceased actor or director by watching one of his/her movies as soon as I hear the sad news. Burt Reynolds died on 5th of September 2018 and, although he's far from my favorite actor of all times, I do feel an honoring is in place since titles like "Deliverance", "White Lightening", "The Cannonball Run" and "Smokey and The Bandit" are nevertheless favorites of mine. Reviewing "Gator" is even a bit of a double tribute, since the film also marked Reynold's debut as a director.

"Gator" is exactly what you expect a pulpy and trashy sequel to the 1973 semi-classic "White Lightening" to be like, except that everything now revolves even more around the hunky & cool persona of illegal liquor runner Gator McClusky. Freshly released from prison, Gator is forced by a New York DA to help apprehend his former childhood buddy Bama McCall, who's now a big-shot Bayou crook. Gator is initially reluctant to betray his old friend and sabotages the operation, but when he finds out that Bama has become a relentless gangster who runs mafia-like protection rings and forces underaged girls into prostitution, all his sympathy quickly vanished. Like "White Lightening", the tone of "Gator" is also primarily light-headed, but with many raw and dark edges as well as unexpected moments of extreme violence. The typically hillbilly-soundtrack and the speedboat-chases through the Bayou swamps are comical, but Bama McCall's sinister henchmen and their gangster practices are grim and more reminiscent to the dark and uncompromising type of 70s grindhouse/exploitation cinema. The role of Jerry Reed is particularly and utmost surprising! I previously just knew him as a country-crooner (he also sings the title song) or as the jolly but harmless sidekick (for example in "Smokey and the Bandit") but here Reed depicts a truly evil guy with a nasty shotgun and intimidating helpers. His lieutenants are a scary giant named Bones, so tall that he has stick his head out of the open roof when driving a car, and a perverse creep named Smiley (you'll see why).

Reynolds occasionally demonstrates that he holds the potential of a competent director, and "Gator" is overall good entertainment, but the film is too long and especially the romantic interludes between Gator and love-interest Lauren Hutton are too tedious and interfere with the explosive action & spectacle during the finale. Throughout the 70s and 80s, it seemed like Burt Reynolds had a fun career with a few classics and a quite large number of genuine crowd-pleasers. He made a remarkable comeback in the 90s, with a few hits ("Boogie Nights") and more misses ("Striptease", "Cop and a Half") but always kept his Bayou bad-boy coolness. Rest in peace, Mr. Bandit.

I'm a huge fan of Burt Reynolds. The man just won't go down, no matter what odds are stacked against him. People can say what they want about him, he's certainly no quitter and he usually comes out on top. He's been a hero of mine for most of my life and I've grown up loving his movies. Did anyone ever see the good ole boy flick "White Lightning"? Well this is the sequel.

While this might be a strange sequel, I can understand why it is so different from the first. First off, this was made mostly for the drive-in crowd who may not have caught "White Lightning". This allowed the sequel to be a bit looser, where it didn't have to deal too much with what happened in "Lightning". Basically, what you're getting is a a continuation of the Gator McClusky character.

Here's a quickie on the plot: Swamp rat, Gator McClusky is living the life after just being released from the State Penn. He's currently spending his days moonshining with the old man, when the feds come to him with a proposition. Infiltrate a group led by childhood friend, Bama McCall (Jerry Reed), get enough evidence to bust him, or go back to prison for making moonshine. It's a hard choice. Double cross a lifelong friend or go back to prison and lose custody of your daughter. Needless to say, Gator goes with option A and eventually, all hell will break loose.

This was Burt's first shot at directing and, for the most part, he does okay. I have a few quibbles though. This is a PG-rated flick that was most-likely marketed as a comedy. There is plenty of comedy, in fact, from watching the first ten-minutes, you're going to think this is "Smokey and the Bandit" done in the swamps with Jack Weston playing a New York Smokey. There are a lot of laughs in this film and almost all of the characters are likeable. So this leads to my big bitch: Why in the HELL did everything go from lighthearted to cold and violent in the last act? Why did everything have to go down-hill in such a hurry? Maybe it's because the film spends too long meandering in pointless situations and then, when time comes for something significant, it happens lightning-quick. That is why I had such a hard time believing Jerry Reed as the bad guy. His performance was top notch but the film's pacing makes him go from good buddy, to mean, crooked, bad ass way too quickly.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but it's all very cofusing. Maybe, had the film been edited and trimmed a bit better, all of this would have been a bit more believable and things would have ran more smoothly. But being as it is, the whole thing has a very truncated feel. Watch it and you'll see what I mean.

I'm giving this film a 7/10 because, despite it's flaws, it's a hell of a lot of fun and Burt gives the kind of performance that you've come to know and love. "Gator" is definitely a good movie, once you get past it's faults. It's a real shame that movies with this kind of theme aren't made anymore.

one of the most endearing qualities about this movie is the fact that it brings the seventies back to your memories...it was filmed in 1976 and it shows it often....the scene where jerry (reed) enters the "southside shuffle "topless" bar...nails the period completely... as well as other fashions, lingo, and of course burt himself...who "owned" the seventies....due to this movie and his other good ole boy films of the south....coupled with the overwhelming popularity of smokey and the bandit (yet to come a year later)...established burt as a seemingly permanent fixture in cinema back then...I always thought burt would stay on top I guess...he seemed invincible as the #1 box office attraction...he is definitely an icon of the seventies time capsule...his swagger and his sense of humor put a brand on me as I remember many times in my life (silently) asking myself...what would burt do in a situation like this?....

as pure acting goes...the film had one of the best supporting actors around and due to his lack of experience I guess you would just have to sum up jerry reed as being a "natural".....he played the villain so well you wanted him to stop...and go back to the good ole boy that you knew he could be (later as cletus snow in smokey and the bandit)

gator is/was one of my all time favorite films...from a time period that I thought would never end...I miss it and this film will help you reunite with it if you are nostalgic at all...

This 1976 sequel to Burt's successful good-ole-boy movie WHITE LIGHTNING doesn't represent its star in peak form--as actor or director. (The picture was uncreditedly co-directed by James Best, star of several Sam Fuller movies; he didn't learn much from the old man.) But it's memorable for one reason only--for the guy who, for my money, takes the cake for Greatest Character Actor of the Seventies Gone to Waste.

Jerry Reed is best known for his novelty songs and his appearances in bumptious comedies like HOT STUFF (opposite Suzanne Pleshette and Dom DeLuise). But look at his chillingly suave downhome hit man in Michael Ritchie's THE SURVIVORS, or his magnificent performance here, and you see the man who should have had Tommy Lee Jones' career.

As Bama, a dirt-poor boy made good as a pimp and a gangster, Jerry Reed has the kind of unnameable connection with the audience that other singers-turned-actors like Sinatra and, on occasion, Willie Nelson had. His Bama never lets you forget the tin-shack fate he overcame through a life of peddling sin: he's like the redneck star of his own blaxploitation movie playing in his head. The smoothie charmer who can turn sadistic-violent on a dime is as ripe an opportunity for ham as they come, but Jerry Reed is genuinely seductive and chilling--and Reynolds hands him scene after scene to steal. The guy was a great actor--and he never got the chances that a similar (and less varied) actor like Charles Napier got.

If someone's reading this has the opportunity--give the guy a job.

"Gator," Burt Reynold's feature film debut shows very brief flashes of twisted dark-comedy, but the vast majority of it just plain sucks the big one. I mean, Reynolds took the gritty, funny, sweaty, realistic character from "White Lightning" and completely threw him away, replacing the original Gator McClusky with the slick, mustachioed, urbanized, Hollywood Burt Reynolds we'd seen cracking wise on talk shows. No character, no grit, no acting--just Burt doing a caricature of himself. On top of that add a lame script that could have been adapted for any actor and any lead character, static direction, and virtually no continuity from the first hit film (now Gator has a son and no mother?). Only Jerry Reed rises above the lame-itude, beginning an acting career he was never allowed to fully develop beyond being Burt's sidekick. A waste of time. See "White Lightning" twice and you'll have a better time than watching this sequel.