"Every cop in the state was after her. Everybody else was behind her."Lou-Jean, a blonde woman, tells her husband, who is imprisoned, to escape. They plan to kidnap their own child, who was placed with foster parents. The escape is partly successful, they take a hostage, who is a policeman and are pursued
through to Texas... REVIEWAlthough he began his rise with the now-classic 1971 made-for-TV thriller Duel, The Sugarland Express, released in early 1974, is Steven Spielberg's first actual big-screen foray.Loosely based on an actual incident that occurred in Texas in 1969, the film focuses on a fugitive couple (Goldie Hawn, William Atherton) who kidnap a Texas state trooper (Michael Sachs) at gunpoint and force him to drive them to Sugarland to get their infant son back from a foster home. What ensues, however, is a nearly 30 hour-long chase across southern Texas involving pretty much the entire Texas law enforcement community (and some right-wing gun nuts, too), including a very sympathetic veteran peace officer (Ben Johnson), who realizes that Hawn and Atherton are "nothin' but a couple of kids."Audiences were led to believe, based on the presence of former "Laugh-In" star Hawn, that The Sugarland Express would be a comedy. But the fact that there is gunfire and action within told them otherwise. There is humor, to be sure, much of it very Southern-fried; but Spielberg ratchets up the dramatic and tragic aspects of the story. For that reason, Sugarland was not much more than a minor box-office hit, more of a prelude to Jaws, which would come out the following year. But as an unconventional road drama and a story about love and crime taken to an extreme, The Sugarland Express is masterful. Hawn got most of the attention, and rightly so; but the really great performance here is from longtime John Ford/Sam Peckinpah veteran Johnson, who is superb as the Texas lawman sympathetic to their cause but sworn to uphold his oath to the state.A must-see early film from master cinemagician Steven Spielberg.
March 26, 2009
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