Thunderboat Row is a TV movie filmed as a pilot for an ABC series, but the network chose not to pick it up. The film features some great shots of high-speed powerboats. The story concerns a task force made up of various law enforcement agencies in South Florida, chasing the bad guy drug runners in the fastest boats in the world.
Chad Everett stars as Ben Bishop. The Ben Bishop character is based on real-life boat builder and powerboat racing legend Don Aronow. Many of the events that are seen in this movie actually occurred in real life. The book "Speed Kills," by Artur Jay Harris, tells the story of how drug runners incorporated powerboats into their smuggling and anyone who reads this book will see that some of the incidents in the movie were taken directly from real life.
Also in the cast is the beautiful Freddie Simpson. She is best remembered for her role as Ellen Sue in the classic baseball movie, "A League of Their Own" (1992). In Thunderboat Row, Freddie Simpson has some very emotional scenes, and she handles them quite well.
Also in the movie are Jason Adams, sometimes billed as Ash Adams, Nick Corri, also known as Jsu Garcia, Dennis Boutsikaris as the bad guy, Anthony Rene Jones, Peter Murnik, Todd Schaeffer, John J. York, and Robert Estes, who later starred in the TV series "Silk Stalkings." Carrell Myers has a small role as Tami, Ben Bishop's girlfriend.
Thunderboat Row is an entertaining and exciting movie. It was very well made with great production values. Those sleek, super-fast powerboats ripping through the water are worth watching all by themselves. This is an old-fashioned good guys vs. bad guys movie and it will keep you interested from start to finish.
