The Sugarland Express

Although The Sugarland Express has been compared to Thelma And Louise most often, there was a film that came out the following year from Stephen Spielberg's first big screen classic that it most resembles in my mind.

Goldie Hawn's Lou Jean might not have all that much in common with Al Pacino's Eugene in Dog Day Afternoon except for two things. Neither are the sharpest knife in the drawer and both concoct a really whacked out scheme that gets them in way over their heads.

Unlike Pacino who put a little thought into his bank robbery plan, on a visit to a minimum security prison to her husband William Atherton who has only weeks to go on his sentence, she persuades him to bust out to kidnap their baby who foster parents are looking to adopt. The parents are in Sugarland which is West Texas near the Rio Grande.

They actually bust out quite easily. But then during a routine traffic stop they misread signals and take rookie state policeman Michael Sacks a hostage.

Just like Dog Day Afternoon anyone with a working brain knows that this crazy thing is doomed, but the adrenaline rush for Hawn and Atherton is out of control. The two become popular cult figures one way or another.

Hawn, Atherton, and Sack are fine in their roles. Kudos also go to Ben Johnson for his role as the man in charge of the hunt, the chase, and the hostage negotiation.

Stephen Spielberg started his big screen career with a winner.

Based on a true story, a woman (Goldie Hawn) helps her husband (William Atherton) escape from prison so they can kidnap their child from the foster family he's been placed with. Along the way the duo takes a state trooper hostage and are pursued by police while their story gains media attention. Steven Spielberg's first theatrical film (Duel was made for TV but released in theaters later). Also his first collaboration with John Williams. It's a fun dramedy with some great performances from Goldie Hawn, William Atherton, and the rest of the cast. Especially good are the colorful supporting characters, many of which have an authenticity about them that gives the film some nice flavor. An under-appreciated gem in Spielberg's oeuvre.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film. Fellow fans of Steven Spielberg advised me to see "Sugarland Express," so I bought the DVD. I'm glad I did it as it is one of Spielberg's best. He should have made films more along the lines of "Duel," "Jaws" and the above film. Being based upon a true story is a Feather in the films cap. The two main characters - played by Goldie Hawn and William Atherton - are very sympathetic in spite of their circumstances. She is planning to find their baby boy so they can be re-united. He is a convict serving a light sentence. They both help his breaking out of jail and after taking a police officer hostage, they lead the police of Texas on a state wide chase. The wife and her convict husband race against time so they can find their son. This has thoughtful moments and it isn't a hard- hitting film. There is some violence but it's fairly mild and minimal. The pace is good and the tension is sustained throughout. Ben Johnson does well as one of the senior police officers who leads the Dragnet. He is a tough man but he isn't totally lacking in compassion. The direction is some of the best from Steven Spielberg.

The first theatrical feature by Spielberg, his last as just another director before "Jaws," this story is saddled by what I call an 'idiot's resolve' plot. This means the main characters behave like complete idiots and, in real life, wouldn't get two steps in the direction they're going, much less the miles of roadway managed in this pic. But - and this is an important point - the story is supposedly based on a real life incident, which means such theorizing may not apply here. It all depends on how much Spielberg and the writers exaggerated events, which I tend to think was quite a bit. The story is jump-started in that a 2-year old baby is placed in foster care; the real parents (Hawn & Atherton), small-time criminals, won't have it and break the father's incarceration to set out for the foster home. But, from the outset, these two are presented as such obvious losers, I was hoping they'd never reach the kid. The father, for example, has only 4 months remaining of post-prison time to do; in short order, the idiot couple's transgressions escalate from auto theft to kidnapping of a cop (Sacks). In essence, they quickly sabotaged any chance for themselves of getting the kid back in a happy fashion.

I also got the impression Spielberg was poking a lot of fun at Texas and Texacans in general, where this takes place. Besides the two idiotic so-called parents, most everyone else is also presented as a buffoon, a country hick with no clue. The more sinister examples are those who live for the opportunity to shoot someone - this is gun country, after all. The only one who escapes with his dignity intact is the police captain, well played by Ben Johnson. There are traces of the imagery and poignancy which many of Spielberg's later pictures would be laced with. There's the absurdity of that long, very long line of police vehicles, lights flashing, following that one car with the fugitives (I guess no other crimes needed attention in the county that day?). And the sudden look on Atherton's face when he watches a Road Runner cartoon is amazing. But these are a few instances far and between in an ambling picture. Hawn is immensely likable, of course, but in the end she comes off as an idiotic screaming shrew who directly causes bad stuff to happen. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really like women such as this. But then, if this is true-to-life, Spielberg captured some sense of an unpleasant reality we have no control over. It just didn't retain such a consistency through the entire movie.

After the success of Duel (which was really a TV movie) Sugarland Express (Spielberg's first feature film) flopped at the box office, though it received a reasonably warm critical response. In fact this is a great little movie for all kinds of reasons.

If you're interested in Spielberg as a director this is fascinating as it begins to lay out most of the themes that have driven his work ever since - family (especially divided and dysfunctional families), childhood, parenthood, outsiders, America and Americana etc. It's also a really interesting piece in terms of his developing style. This is the first Hollywood film in which panaflex cameras were used allowing Spielberg to produce fantastically elaborate and fluid shots even in the confines of a car (see the superb 360 pan fixed on Ben Johnson's car when he first talks to the Poplins)- a kind of cinematography that has become a hall mark of Spielberg's, as have the rising crane shots and extended tracking shots that pepper the film. Spielberg skies and "God Light" (his term for shafts of light in mist/at night) also feature heavily.

It's also a really interesting if somewhat unrecognised influence on films like Thelma and Louise which seems to lift its basic structure and characters right out of this film. The way Ben Johnson's Captain Tanner equates to Harvey Keitel's police officer in Ridley Scott's film seems particularly close.

Fantastic performances all round too. Johnson, Horne and Atherton (a much under-used actor who has been largely wasted since, playing roles like the self serving journalist in the Die Hard films)particularly shine.

It's also very funny, sad and engaging from beginning to end. Can't recommend this one enough - especially if you're a Spielberg fan.