Another gear-head movie with another “bad” ending. It started out with a 66 Impala and I was not impressed with the action. A driver and his mechanic rob a grocery store and along the way pick up the extra baggage of the driver’s part-time girlfriend. All three of the passengers hate each other from time to time and it is a weird relationship they have. Just about the time I’m starting to wonder why this is touted as a great chase movie, they swap cars to a 69 Charger.
The chase sequences pick up from here. The police are chasing him in beefed up Interceptors and helicopters. The non-conventional cop that is chasing him in the helicopter is battling the driver as well as the police chief that is more concerned about politics and budgets than about catching the bad guy. He puts his career on the line to catch them as the bad guys are putting their lives on the line to get away. The driver is battling the wit of his girlfriend and the conscious of his mechanic. The chase comes to an end as the Charger loses the cops and the helicopter runs out of gas. The helicopter lands and continues to order phantom cars around to box in the Charger trying to get Fonda to outdrive himself and make a mistake. When the mechanic realizes what is going on, they celebrate and realize they are going to make a clean getaway. Just as they begin to slow down and coast out to freedom, a truck pulls out in front of them and they die in a fiery crash. The end.
Yeah, I love the ending again. Fast, crash, die, end. The funniest part was the redneck cop driving the Interceptor. He just kept talking line after line in such dripping southern drawl that I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a great car chase movie and I liked it but here again it is so dated. The seventies style filming and music made the movie so campy by today’s standards. But, overall, it was a lot of fun.
6 of 11 Skulls
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