Hal Needham

  • White Lightning (1973)

    White Lightning (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Years before Smokey and the Bandit, Burt Reynolds was already playing the Bandit, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Let’s see: In White Lightning, we find him playing a likable rogue — a moonshiner doing time, and recruited by a federal agency to go undercover so they can expose local law-enforcement officials as corrupt. Forced into driving moonshine and seducing a mobster’s girlfriend, he eventually takes on the local sheriff in a southern backwoods car chase that ends up being the climax of the film. There are differences with The Bandit, and the tone isn’t quite comic as the better-known film, but the basics are there and Reynolds does the rest in trying out the mannerisms fully exploited in the latter movie. Look at the credits and you’ll even see Hal Needham (future director of Smokey and the Bandit) doing stunts. The plot does get goofier as it goes on, which doesn’t set the best first impression but at least makes for a stronger back-half. A touch too long at 101 minutes but infused with a remarkable southern-state atmosphere, White Lightning would have been better if it had been more focused on Reynolds and the action. Exactly like what happened latter with Smokey and the Bandit.

  • Hooper (1978)

    Hooper (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) I repeat myself, but I’ll say it again: I’m astonished that there aren’t more movies about stuntmen. It’s a naturally dramatic premise, it’s Hollywood-related, it’s meta and it’s spectacular. What else do you need? At least there was a brief spate of such films back in the late 1970s, with Hooper being the best of them. It’s really not an accident if the film came from a collaboration between Burt Reynolds and director Hal Needham—both actors/former stuntmen who had a streak of successful collaboration on stunt-heavy comedies from Smokey and the Bandit to Stroker Ace, through one of my favourites The Cannonball Run. Hooper was the second of their big collaboration, and it’s as definitive a statement on the life and thrills of professional stunts as you can still imagine. The film goes into the nitty-gritty of the profession and the tolls it takes, the kind of personality it attracts, and the relationships between stuntmen and other people around them. The biggest surprise here is that the film is as much of a character study as it’s a showcase for big stunts, with a finale that collapses chimney stacks, blows up tanker trucks and has the protagonist jump over a damaged bridge. Reynolds is ridiculously charismatic here, and there’s a sense that he’s spending accumulated starpower to work with Needham in delivering an homage to their former profession. (It was several years in the making.) Then-veteran Needham seems to be having fun as well in staging action setpieces, poking fun at the Hollywood machine and letting Reynolds play in his element. The stunts, as befit such a film, are exceptionally impressive, especially in a post-CGI world—for a film dealing with danger, it’s appropriate to fear (even a little bit) for the characters and the stuntmen stepping in for the characters. And that, unfortunately, may clue us in as to why the late 1970s were the golden age for stunt movies—as special effects grew during the Modern Hollywood era, so did the artifice—while stuntpeople are still risking their lives for movies today (and still too often dying for it), no one will ever greenlight a project perceived as dangerous and even if they did, there would be so much CGI as to contradict the theme of a stunt film. Audiences simply wouldn’t believe it unless extraordinary care would be taken in selling the illusion. The other thing is simpler: Hooper does such a terrific job at exploring the world of stunts that it may never be equalled. Maybe it’s better not to attempt it.

  • Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)

    Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, September 2017) While Smokey and the Bandit II is a noticeable step down from the first film, I find it fascinating to see that I remembered more of it from boyhood memories than the first film (specifically the end stunt sequences). As a grown-up, there’s almost no limit to the ways this sequel is worse than the original: The set-up makes no sense, the film sabotages itself in ensuring that it revisits the same dynamics from the first film, the irritation caused by Jackie Gleason’s character is magnified (and multiplied by the indulgent use of Dom Deluise) and the whole elephant plot device slows down what should have been a pedal-to-the-metal action comedy. The one thing that the sequel does better than the first is the final demolition derby: While none of the stunts make sense from a story perspective, it’s a special kind of fun to see director/stuntman Hal Needham go crazy with a hundred police cars ready to be scrapped and just film whatever metal-tearing silliness his team can conjure. Otherwise, it’s another excuse to see Burt Reynolds effortlessly charm audiences (although he first has to dig himself out of a contrived pit of overacted despair) and while his banter with Sally Field isn’t as strong this time around, there’s still a little bit of what was so special in the first movie. Otherwise, most reviewers since the film’s release have gotten it right: this is a pure cash grab of a sequel, unnecessary and not particularly well executed. If you’re out of time, just skip to the last twenty minutes or so to see the stunts.

  • Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

    Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On DVD, September 2017) I distinctly remember seeing Smokey and the Bandit when I was a boy, but other than a few curious moments of recognition or anticipation on this second viewing, I had forgotten nearly every detail of the film. Much of it isn’t too complicated, dealing with a cross-state beer run enlivened by a vengeful sheriff tracking down the woman who left his son at the altar. The transport truck moving the beer west isn’t nearly as interesting as the black Trans-Am (driven by Burt Reynolds, no less) running interference by attracting as much attraction as speedily as possible. Elements of the premise, these days, can benefit from historical annotations: That Coors wasn’t sold east of Oklahoma; that it spoiled within days due to lack of preservatives; and the various intricacies of police jurisdiction. But little of the technicalities matter when the point of Smokey and the Bandit is to stage stunt sequences, riff of Reynolds’s charm (less potent today—see the need for annotations—but still effective), feature Sally Field in a rather comic role and generally have fun sticking it to The Man. It’s really not subtle—Jerry Reed’s insanely catchy song “East bound and down” essentially acts as a Greek Chorus explaining the main points of the movie. Otherwise, Jackie Gleason’s antagonist is a pure caricature that starts grating early and never becomes more sympathetic. There’s some sweet comedy in the way the “legend” of the Bandit seems universal in the film’s universe, reaching minor characters via CB radio (a technology essential to the film’s atmosphere) and making them react in extraordinary ways to facilitate their progress. The stunts are fine as could be expected from stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, the banter between Reynolds and Field is occasionally great, but it’s Smokey and the Bandit’s general atmosphere that remains compelling today, even if often on an anthropological level. 

  • The Cannonball Run (1981)

    The Cannonball Run (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, September 2017) It’s funny what we remember from our childhood. Watching The Cannonball Run, which I last saw as a young boy in the early eighties, I had regular flashes of recognition or anticipation as I suspected what was about to happen. Of course, I’m not an eight-year-old boy any more, and my current liking of the film’s stunts and cultural references is somewhat tempered by its juvenile tone and wildly uneven script. Legendary action director Hal Needham knew how to direct stunts (there’s a pointed reference to his Smokey and the Bandit that reminds me that I should re-watch that one soon), and so the best moments of the film are the chases, fights and other action hijinks. A young-looking Jackie Chan brings a bit of his patented style to a desert brawl, and the film also features such legends as Burt Reynolds, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Roger Moore (hilariously riffing on his James Bond turn), Peter Fonda, Farrah Fawcett and Adrienne Barbeau (I did remember their outfits) in various roles. I can still recognize some of those references by dint of having been born in the 1970s, but I wonder what younger viewers will make of them. Some of the comedy still works—I’m specifically thinking about the monologue explaining the rules of the transcontinental Cannonball Run, delivered with practised confidence by Brock Yates, the creator of the real-life Cannonball Run. Alas, this action/comedy charge is seriously hampered by the puerile humour (much of it sexist or racist) and uneven scripting. I strongly disliked Dom Deluise’s character(s), for instance, and gritted my teeth at the stereotypes passing off as jokes: seeing notorious Hong Kong native Jackie Chan cast as a Japanese makes no sense, and let’s really not talk about the middle-eastern Sheikh character. That’s not even getting close to the heavily sexist tone of the film—this is a film by boys for boys, and while I’d argue that there’s a place for cleavage-revealing spandex outfits in racing movies, much of the rest of the film (which plays off drug-facilitated kidnapping for laughs and sexiness, among many other things) is more off-putting than anything else. Add to that some primitive anti-government sentiments (as party-poopers) and you get the picture. For all that I like about the stunts in the film, The Cannonball Run is one of those intriguing but flawed movies that should be prime candidates for a polished remake. I promise I won’t complain too much as long as the worst issues with the original are corrected.