Le convoi

I don't think this film is as bad as it's reputation suggests. I've seen a fair number of these kind of truckin'/car chase films from the late 70's, and I think it's a fairly average representation of the genre ... perhaps even a bit better than average given the presence of Kris Kristofferson, Ernest Borgnine and Burt Young. What's disappointing is that you expect Peckinpah to elevate anything he works on to something better than "average genre film" status, and he fails to do that. There are moments when you sense his presence ... a slow motion shot of big trucks hightailing it along a sandy back road achieves a certain poetic majesty ... but mostly you get the feeling that he simply didn't care about this film. It's a giant missed opportunity.

This film is a strange duck. One of the only two bona fide commercial hits for one of the most celebrated American directors of his era nevertheless pretty much killed Sam Peckinpah's career. What went wrong?

Some blame the basic concept, basing an entire movie on a three-year-old AM novelty hit. Like the song, it's a rambling tale about truckers ramming roadblocks and talking to each other on citizens-band radios. Kris Kristofferson as lead trucker Rubber Duck seems sheepish about the overall point, while Ali MacGraw as his love interest looks uncomfortable in a bad haircut.

"Convoy" isn't Shakespeare, but for the first 35 minutes it establishes an amiable tone and a colorful cast of supporting players. The jokes are hit-and-miss, but establish an enjoyable trucker camaraderie. Kristofferson's not much of an actor for me, but he's effective here working his gruff-but-kindly persona for what it's worth.

The early part of the film culminates in a fistfight in a roadstop diner. This sequence is well-shot and edited, belying the notion of Sam directing the entire film out of his skull on cocaine. A slow-motion shot of ketchup splattering over one combatant shows Bloody Sam had a sense of humor about his reputation. One cop seems impervious to fists and chairs alike, leaving Duck to marvel: "That ain't no cop, that's a mule wearing a uniform." You laugh because it's set up well.

But then the film moves to the Rubber Duck and his pals escaping the law, and with that ideas run out fast. The movie pushes its points, hazy as they are, with unbecoming directness. One cop introduces himself: "My name is Bob Bookman, sir, and I hate truckers." The Duck goes on some existential tangent about his growing band of followers, telling his pal Pig Pen (Burt Young) "Who the hell else they got?"

Much of the film focuses on Sheriff "Dirty" Lyle, overplayed by an uncommonly intense Ernest Borgnine, who chases the Duck because, well, he's the law and doesn't like backtalk from people he hits up for bribes. The story wanders into amnesty discussions between the Duck and an ambitious governor, with assorted points about grandstanding politicans hammered over and over.

In an out-of-nowhere dramatic shift, trucker Spider Mike (Franklin Ajaye) is beaten and stuck in jail in Texas, setting the stage for the Duck to break him out. The amiable comedy of the early film still lingers, but it's largely overwhelmed by this and other stabs at significance. By the end, the Duck has passed from myth to deity in a drawn-out finale with a lot of strained laughter. Here's an idea: It's a comedy when the audience is left laughing, not the actors on screen.

"Convoy" never sinks entirely; the visuals are cool and the supporting cast fun company. It just doesn't do enough with what it has. It's here I think Peckinpah failed the film, not working the script in a more engaging direction. He leans on stunts in place of story; after the fifteenth flipped cop car I started getting old "A-Team" flashbacks.

A lot of familiar faces from other Peckinpah films appear here, in both lead and supporting roles. Sam himself appears twice, as a boom operator in a camera car chasing the convoy and as a face on the T-shirt of Widow Woman (Madge Sinclair) that reads: "Uncle Sam Wants You".

Early in the film, Widow Woman sums up the spirit of "Convoy" when someone asks her if she wants to join them in their law-breaking adventure. "Why the hell not?" she replies. It's a line that worked when Ben Johnson said it in "The Wild Bunch". Here it is not so convincing. "Convoy" entertains, but it never convinces. For a Peckinpah movie, that isn't good enough.

Convoy is the shallowest of Sam Peckinpah's films, but by no means the worst. It contains some oddball characters and a number of memorable sequences, and alternately funny and thought-provoking dialogue. It also features one of the very best Ernest Borgnine performances that I can remember - not bad for a man who won an Oscar for Marty!

The story traces the fortunes of some truckers, led by "Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson), as they drive through the states of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. They are pursued by the law, and gradually more and more truckers join on at the back of the line until they have literally hundreds of lorries, all roaring along the highways in protest of the prejudicial treatment they receive from the cops.

Kristofferson is supremely enigmatic as the leader of the pack. Ali MacGraw is a bit of a bore as his female companion. As mentioned before, the real star is Borgnine, mean and menacing, funny and cruel as the cop who dedicates his life to victimising truck drivers. For such a shallow film, it looks and sounds beautiful. Even the car chase through the sand is poetic. I can't explain what's good about this picture. It sounds dull and pointless, yet to watch it is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Convoy is a contradiction of itself.... plotless, pointless, thinly plotted, and yet still (somehow) a top notch film!

Sam Peckinpah's 'Convoy' works as, if nothing else, a little cultural/pop cultural archeology. Based on a novelty song that was itself a product of a short-lived CB (citizen's band) radio/trucker craze that swept the States in the mid 70s, it offers up a rather vivid slice of life from the days of malaise. It was one of several such films ('Smokey and the Bandit', 'Breaker! Breaker!', 'White Line Fever') trying to cash in, but this one is notable for the presence of Peckinpah behind the camera (though how much the struggling Peckinpah was actually behind said camera is apparently open to debate).

'Convoy' is a tough film to nail down. At times it veers into the dadgummit, cornpone comedy territory of Smokey and the Bandit, and at others it evokes a more traditional Peckinpah zeitgeist. Ironically, it probably works best when it straddles that line. At those times, 'Convoy' offers up a broadly entertaining action yarn, with colorful characters occupying simple, well defined turf. I wish Peckinpah and Co. had somehow been able to marry that more cohesively to his standard themes while leaving the broad yucks out of the equation.

The "Smokey and the Bandit" target audience never knew what hit them when they went to see "Convoy". Used to a diet of direct-to-drive-in films they had no conception of what could happen when Hollywood threw big bucks and a competent (if distracted) director at the genre. What they got was something that movie historians are still trying to classify. A movie based on a CB radio song that morphed into a poetic homage to machinery; where trucks are turned into mythological monsters and filmed cruising through the heat-radiating desert to a score of classical music.

Why Sam Peckinpah elected to take on this project has really never been explained, although that decision certainly supports those tales of substance abuse, and the final cut is bizarre enough to also fit that explanation. It is an amazing film as it wobbles between self-parody and self-importance to a degree never seen before and never seen again until "Apocalypse Now". I'm not sure how much attention and interest Peckinpah actually showed toward the making of "Convoy". It has the disjointed feel of multiple directors or of a Director of Photography filling in many times when Sam was not motivated to make an appearance on the set.

Kris Kristofferson is fine as trucker "Rubber Duck" although Earnest Borgnine pretty much steals the whole thing.

But "Convoy's real claim to fame is as the film where Ali MacGraw's career spectacularly crashed and burned. She did not just fade away but shattered into a million pieces. MacGraw got into acting in her late twenties but looked young enough to be believable as a college-age girl in her first two starring roles; the excellent "Goodbye Columbus" and the pathetic but hugely popular "Love Story". Her age worked to her advantage as her two characters (particularly "Goodbye's" Brenda) came off as poised, stylish, classy and smart. She picked up a huge following of male viewers who would have bought tickets to anything she was in and she was generally inoffensive to female viewers. She was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, started fashion crazes, and made the cover of Time magazine. She also picked up the head of Paramount Studios (Robert Evans) as a husband dedicated to advancing her acting career. It was a done deal that she would get the lead in "Chinatown", a role that would fit her rather limited range (poised, classy, stylish). Her only obstacle was managing the transition to middle age in a way that her smitten fans could accept.

Unfortunately she dumped Evans for a short marriage (5 years) to Steve McQueen. Just how badly her image and career were managed after she left Evans is illustrated by her bad haircut in "Convoy". Just glance at the promotional poster and you may be able to hear the sounds of a million bubbles bursting in the minds of her male fans. The idea of "Brenda" playing a truck stop mama with short curly hair would have made it too painful to even contemplate seeing this movie. Her fan base literally melted away with the start of the film's promotion campaign. They never returned, the illusion had died. Ironically had they actually seen her horrible performance in "Convoy" they might have felt better, as the performance is so absurd it achieves a sort of surreal quality. But a couple years later they discovered replacement Jennifer Beals and moved on.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.