Un duo d'enfer!

Good road movie and pretty emotion provoking. There are so many involving moments where you may sympathize the characters or feel sad about them, feel their situation and live it with them. The story may lack direction or logically complete end but nevertheless it's worth watching for the warmth of the characters' relations, the sensual way they stick together. If you can enjoy movies without judging them too strictly and without expecting anything stunning or extraordinary and just want to spend time following the way and sharing troubles with the characters, this movie might be for you. I rate this movie for the warmth that is expressed by the protagonists

Just recently checked out this little known film from 1981 called "Back Roads" and I knew it would be a winner when it had Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field in it and I was right the chemistry had worked. This is a heartfelt little tale of struggle and a journey of survival it touches your emotions showing that everyone has good in them and life is an unexpected journey. Set in the deep rural south I believe Alabama you have Sally Field as Amy Post a sweet and love like street walking hotel staying hooker who earns 20 dollars for each bang she gives. Things shakeup a little bit when she meets the rough and rugged Elmore Pratt(Tommy Lee Jones) a man who's dreams of becoming a prize fighter has blown up in smoke as now he moonlights as a taxi car washer! After hooking up the two decide to journey out to California the best way they can as money will not stop them. This is an interesting journey in which both each learn respect, love and courage it proves life is a journey of discovery and learning how to love. Overall good little underrated gem to watch.

Overlooked early 1980s film. The movie is a depressing look at two seedy characters trying to make it through life. The acting is solid and both Fields and Jones look the part of someone living on the edges of society. Jones is a two-bit club boxer with a reputation for losing. He comes across in a less then positive light, yet down deep, there's a heart of gold. Fields as a street hustler looks beat-up in this film. He rarely cracks a smile, and it's one of here meaty roles. However, the film is a somewhat depressing look at life, at least from the standpoint of street people. It's a fairly entertaining movie and if you're a fan of either Sally Fields or Tommy Lee Jones, then Back Roads is a film to see.

This little film has hooker Sally Field and drifter Tommy Lee Jones hitting the road together when Jones ruins Field's chances for, ahem, gainful employment in the one-horse Southern town where she lives after he decks a cop who tries to bust her. Along the way the two encounter various predicaments and characters, as well as revealing parts of their pasts. Fascinating study that gives two people on the fringe of society faces and intriguing stories. Keep an eye peeled for Nell Carter as a pistol-packin' waitress. Not a bad way to pass the time.

Director Martin Ritt reteamed with his "Norma Rae" star Sally Field for this curiously thin road movie that appears to have been inspired by '40s comedies, although nobody at the time was clamoring for an R-rated Preston Sturges. Field retains her appeal in a role that I'm not sure was meant to be likable or not. She's a hustler-with-a-heart-of-gold down South who dreams of being a manicurist; Tommy Lee Jones is the ex-fighter who heads with her out West for a brand new start. They fight, they make up, they swat bugs, they hitch rides, they fight some more. Ritt obviously wanted to give brand new Oscar winner Sally Field the kind of star build-up she nearly had in the Burt Reynolds pictures from the previous decade, but he needed a judicious editor to shape the scenes of comedy and sentimental drama. He also has a problem transitioning from one tone to the next: there's a rousing bit with Jones scoring in the boxing ring, but the joyous mood is then immediately undercut by too-real violence involving a sadistic madam (a genuinely chilling Miriam Colon). Ritt blamed the poor box office returns on his star-leads, who reportedly did not get along. True enough, simply casting nice-girl Field as a streetwalker is little more than a stunt without strong material to back her up. Field does get a subplot trying to establish contact with a child she gave up for adoption, but it leads nowhere--just like the majority of the dead-end "Back Roads". ** from ****