Tank

James Garner portrays a military officer who has one very unique distinction. He owns his own Sherman tank! After butting heads with a sheriff's deputy, his son is framed for drug possession and he must battle wits with the evil sheriff.

This movie is sort of a cross between the original 'Smokey and the Bandit' and a free wheeling episode of 'The Dukes of Hazzard'. It's a predictable, mildly amusing film with cultural stereotypes. If you're willing to overlook this, it will provide you with the typical fast food type of entertainment.

Tank has been an inspiration in my life. Its rich plot is rife with moral dilemmas, all of which end in ethical resolutions. Zack (James Garner) is the epitome of all that is good and right in the universe, and he wins in the end like good should. While I usually watch the film for its moral content, sometimes I find myself fast- forwarding to scene eleven, which features james cromwell naked, chained to a phone pole.

Ten stars. This film has changed my life.

If you can ignore the dopey ending, the movie has some very nice surprises best of which is the incredible performance of GD Spradlin as the sheriff. This may be a lightweight movie but he does not throw away his role. He's genuinely scary and believable as the tyrannical sheriff. Jenilee Harrison is also at her most sexy in 1984. She was a mouthwatering beauty back then! The film rolls along pretty blandly but the scenes with C. Thomas Howell getting framed are pretty well done and plausible. If you can get over the guy owning his own Sherman tank, the decision to use it makes at least some sense by that point in the movie.

Sergeant Major Zack Carey (James Garner) made the mistake of being chivalrous in Clemmons, GA. He simply couldn't ignore Deputy Euclid (James Cromwell) beating on the local prostitute. But how was he to know that some bruises on a deputy would so deeply offend the sheriff? Well, that it did and Sheriff Buelton (G.D. Spradlin) is not a very forgiving or even reasonable man.

Sheriff Buelton wanted Carey's hide and when he couldn't get it he had to devise another method of payback. So, he went about planting marijuana in Carey's son's locker. In the small county of Clemmons, GA where the sheriff calls all the shots, that equaled a ticket to jail and whatever else Buelton wanted to do to Billy (C. Thomas Howell).

Carey realized he was defeated and was ready to pay the piper but his wife, LaDonna (Shirley Jones) opted for another resolution. Ole Buelton didn't like the wife's resolution so he fast tracked Billy right to a work labor camp where his safety was a complete toss up.

By this time Sergeant Major Carey had had enough and it was time to get tough. Time to break out the Sherman Tank.

This was a cool movie. At times it was serious and at times it was light. It seemed like whenever real shooting was taking place it was a bit light. They didn't want to kill anybody. When it came to Boss Hogg aka Sheriff Buelton getting his just desserts then it was serious. There was nothing light about his heavy-handed, backwards, racist, and redneck approach to the law. He made a perfect antagonist. He was so easy to hate and root against it made Carey's plight that much more appealing. It was hard to know what year all of this was taking place the sheriff was so confident, reckless, and dismissive of the law. He was the law and well beyond arrests and charges. It was like he ran Georgia!

The trouble Carey was dragged into because he had a heart for a hooker didn't even add up. It was like he rekindled the North v. the South. The moral of the story--what the seasoned rapper E-40 once preached:

Don't save a ho'.

The next thing you know your sons is in prison on some false charges and you're trying to drive a tank across state lines.

Destruction! By tank. Revenge! By tank. Sadistic southern sheriff… yep let's roll over him with a tank! James Garner plays Commander Sgt. Maj. Zack Carey who moves to an army base with his wife and son in the south, but gets on the wrong side of the local sheriff when he knocks out the deputy in bar quarrel. Too proud to let it slide they want payback, so they frame his son with a drug charge and imprison him. Carey would now do it the sheriff's way to get his son out of prison, but circumstances change when that isn't followed leaving his son to be convicted serving three years. So Carey gets in his own prized Sherman tank to bust out his son while heading for the state border in search for actual justice.

Ludicrous, but amusingly dreamt-up boot-kicking patriotic nonsense of standing up. What starts off quite serious (where I thought it might culminate in pushing "Rambo: First Blood" territory), ended up as chaotically gung-ho and comedic in a very mechanical, but spirited sense. Relatively well-made with spacious cinematography and an upbeat music score contributed by Lalo Schifrin. Material-wise the wit is there, but it's a little deeper in its perspective themes, in which it really does moralise its intentions --- as what eventuates is a tug of war involving sappy dialogues and silly humour. The early sequences build some intense confrontations -- where Garner and Spradlin's authority figures go at it each other in their own personal war. But soon that is all forgotten when Garner goes for a pleasant ride with his tank and ends up on sort of a road trip with what seems like all of America are riding the heroic underdog home. Go you good thing! One thing that's for sure is that in one sequence Jenilee Harrison looks good behind the tank's machine gun. An excellent Garner is suitably likable and G.D. Spradlin nails down his bastard role as Sheriff Cyrus Buelton. Also there's a very good support cast lined-up with Shirley Jones, Dorian Harewood, James Cromwell, C. Thomas Howell and John Hancock.