BEFORE: Another Goldie Hawn film, and I'm gradually working my way into another crime-related chain.
THE PLOT: A woman attempts to reunite her family by helping her husband escape prison and together kidnapping their son. But things don't go as planned when they are forced to take a police hostage on the road.
AFTER: It's an odd little film, it's hard to tell exactly what angle it's coming at its subject matter from at times, alternately championing and condemning the main characters as they mount an often low-speed chase across Texas, pursued/escorted by a cadre of police vehicles. I'd advise you to keep an eye on this director, but I don't really think his career is going anywhere...
Seriously though, this is Steven Spielberg's first feature, if you don't count TV movies like "Duel", and within 3 years he went on to release both "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", both of which resemble this film not at all. If I've got any complaint about Spielberg's first feature, it's that it didn't seem to have the good sense to be one of Spielberg's later features.
What I mean to say is, essentially there are only a few different frameworks for movie plots. For example, "the lead characters have to go from here to there to get this thing" should work just as well whether the characters are crossing Texas to get their son or if they're traveling from Nepal to Cairo to track down the Lost Ark of the Covenant. But there's a vast difference in how interesting those two trips are, and the types of challenges that arise along the way.
Turns out this is sort of based on a true event from 1969, when two fugitives kidnapped a public safety trooper and drove across Texas, with a motorcade of about 150 police cars in pursuit. That event had an ending that was decidedly different, yet essentially the same.
NITPICK POINT: Good to know that all you need to break out of prison in Texas is a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans.
Also starring William Atherton (last seen in "The Last Samurai", but most famous for being the asshole EPA guy in "Ghostbusters"), Ben Johnson, Michael Sacks (most famous for playing Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse-Five"), with a cameo from Steve Kanaly.
RATING: 3 out of 10 trading stamps
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