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Convoy [1978]
![Convoy [1978]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61y5bxJhGwL._SL160_.jpg)
RRP: £12.99
Our Price: £3.97 (subject to change)
A US road movie that helped popularise CB radio in the UK
Review date: 2008-10-29 Rating: 8 out of 10
Convoy is a tale of three truckers who defy a corrupt backwater sheriff and end up becoming a national cause celebre. On the run from the authorities, they cross several states and in doing so gather huge support - eventually leading to a horizon full of trucks in their wake.
The film is watchable and fun at times. It wouldn't win any awards, but it did have a long-lasting social appeal as it played a part in popularising CB radio in the UK (thus ushering in the era of silver rods on every second council house across the land).
The film is peppered with CB jargon. It also has an all star soundtrack - such as Kenny Rogers, Crystal Gayle, Billie Jo Spears, Merle Haggard and Glen Campbell (however, in practice, the music is actually low key throughout much of the movie).
Overall, an entertaining 104 minutes. Now where did I leave that Yorkie bar...?
... Breaker out
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Reviews
The lamest Peckinpah in history.
Review date: 2008-02-21 Rating: 4 out of 10
(And to think that i am only reviewing this one so as to get the average down!) Couldn't agree more with Trevor Willsmer's comments about this being Peckinpah's worst movie. You normally expect a great deal more from any "Sam Peckinpah" film. This one is a terrible disappointment, although it seems to have given a lot of pleasure to the other reviewers. Personally, i would buy just about ANY other SP film than this one. The plot is threadbare thin, and i don't know what SP saw in Kris Kristofferson as an actor. (Guess he was okay in "Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid", mind.) Avoid this one, unless you're a Peckinpah completist or have time and money to burn.
Just a sub-zero cool film
Review date: 2007-12-24 Rating: 10 out of 10
This is not the film for girls who like the colour pink...but if ur a petrol head who likes huge trucks and wikid fight scenes in a car chase film this is the one for you, this is a genuinely entertaining film from start to finish with some hilarious scenes!! Bargain price!!
Peckinpah muscles in on Burt Reynolds' turf
Review date: 2007-12-14 Rating: 4 out of 10
Somewhat surprisingly, the watchable but completely forgettable Convoy was the biggest hit of Sam Peckinpah's career, though by all accounts Peckinpah was so stoned on drugs and booze throughout the shoot that he directed little of it, with assistants and James Coburn filling in on the many occasions he couldn't get up the enthusiasm to leave his trailer. It's the kind of film that makes Smokey and the Bandit 3 look substantial and is pretty much a shoo-in as Peckinpah's worst film. There is one good almost balletic sequence of police cars running off dusty backroads set to the accompaniment of a semi-classical version of the C.W. McCall country-and-western song (originally written as a jingle) that provided what little inspiration there was for the film and some good support from Madge Sinclair's Widow Woman. But you can't help feeling that it's straining for significance a bit at times to hide the thinness of it all - truckers are the last of the real cowboys, just tryin' to live free without rules or reasons, don'tcha know - and that it would have been a whole lot more fun with Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason in the Kris Kristofferson and Ernest Borgnine roles. On the plus side at least the action scenes are better handled than in The Killer Elite, although even here some of the signature slow-motion here seems almost accidental, with some scenes fuzzily step-printed in post-production to slow them down (presumably because the few big stunts happened too fast to register onscreen) sticking out like a stylistic sore thumb amid the clarity of the much more effective sequences shot in genuine in-camera slow motion.
A word of warning on the DVD too - the English-language territory releases all omit the three-minute sequence of the governor's aide interviewing the truckers which contains Peckinpah's cameo as one of the camera crew. The German DVD is the uncut version.
My film
Review date: 2007-11-19 Rating: 10 out of 10
I watched this everyday when I was little. That is a not a figure of speech. I mean every day. With trucks lind up on the floor copying the film. Awesome. 10-4 good buddy. We have a bear in the air. Trucks and guns. All films should have them.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Ali MacGraw
Burt Young
Walter Kelley
Kris Kristofferson
Ernest Borgnine
Creators:
Kris Kristofferson (Primary Contributor)
Walter Kelley (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: Optimum Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Optimum Home Entertainment
EAN: 5060034576358
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2006-09-11
Audience rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 106 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1978
Language: English (Original Language)