Viking Night: Smokey and the Bandit
By Bruce Hall
February 6, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Well, that world was the 1970s. And Reynolds was a man who could do whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, to whomever he wanted, all while sporting an absolutely primal Class XII porn star moustache. There was nothing he couldn’t have, so imagine everyone’s surprise when Burt took a liking to the script for a low budget, screwball road comedy called Smokey and the Bandit. This was a strange and wondrous time in our nation’s history, when people talked on their CB radios about how much they loved shaggy hair, ugly polyester clothes, boxy, gas guzzling cars and human sacrifices. Or…whatever else people did for fun in the 1970s. It was the Age of Burt, and there is no better example of the man's total entertainment dominance than Smokey and the Bandit.
“Smokey” is what truckers call highway patrolmen. I don’t know why, probably for the same reason people named “Buddy” are always so unlikeable. “Bandit” is the nickname of Bo Darville (Mr. Reynolds), a legendary truck driver/smuggler/womanizer/moustache enthusiast from Georgia. One day, Bandit is approached by a pair of high rolling Texas millionaires with a potentially lucrative dare. For the princely sum of $80,000, Bandit will drive his truck to a predetermined location, procure 400 cases of (at the time) hard to find Coors beer and smuggle it back in time for a party…or something. It doesn’t matter, what matters is that I can’t believe anyone would go through that much trouble to get Coors. I live about 20 miles from where they make it, and don’t know anybody who drinks it.
But enough about what kind of cheap nasty beer I don’t drink.
Bandit accepts the assignment, and recruits his best friend Snowman (Jerry Reed) to drive the truck. Meanwhile, Bandit will distract the police by driving ahead in a more Burt-Appropriate vehicle. This would be the same blazing fast 1977 Pontiac Trans Am with T tops and ultra bitchin’ rims that was on every block in America the very next year. The plan works brilliantly, as they pick up the beer ahead of schedule and head back with plenty of time to spare. Any time the police show interest in the truck, Bandit plies them away, and looks like a total badass doing it. Then, he almost runs over Sally Field in a wedding dress. More specifically, a runaway bride named Carrie (played by Sally Field) who is totally legal, but still small enough to change clothes in the front seat of a Trans Am. This is also a very Burt-Appropriate thing, as evidenced by the easy onscreen banter between both actors.
You simply cannot rehearse that.
Unfortunately for Bandit, the jilted groom is none other than the dim-witted son of the legendarily round Sheriff Buford T. Justice (a very sweaty Jackie Gleason), whose Texas size outrage at Carrie is exceeded only by his immediate hatred for Bandit. In fact, Justice becomes so obsessed with apprehending Bandit that he more or less forgets about his son’s honor altogether. What he doesn’t forget is how to play the part of celebrity lawman, so as soon as he starts to swing his badge around, every state patrolman within 500 miles is looking for the same black Trans Am. This is where being a smart-ass truck driver with a CB radio and having lots of smart-ass, truck driving friends comes in very handy. Unlikely to win a 1,200-mile-long high speed chase with a hundred cops, Bandit and his handpicked network of blue collar cohorts even the odds on the Citizens Band.
And...that’s kind of it. Smokey and the Bandit is just a hair over 90 minutes, and the majority of that brisk run time is more or less a live action Roadrunner cartoon with cops, fast little cars, big noisy trucks and about 175 gratuitous shots of Sally Fields’ ass. There's never a dull moment, but always very little actually going on. The beer kind of gets forgotten amid the car chases, Bandit seems oblivious to what the hell Carrie's deal is, or why Justice is so interested in him, and the story doesn't keep very good track of where everyone is geographically, or how much time has gone by at any given point. And I love how the police seem to completely give up chasing Bandit every time they lose sight of him. There's a lot of cartoon logic going on here but I feel like that's okay, since I don't think there are any illusions about what kind of film this is.
After all, a complete absence of logic is precisely what makes Roadrunner cartoons funny, and the formula works the same way here. Director/writer Hal Needham was a former stunt man, so naturally he wrote a story light on plot and heavy on car crashes. He was also a close friend of Reynolds, so it's no surprise that Smokey and the Bandit is less a movie than a highly concentrated Burt Reynolds Delivery System, specifically designed to pipe as much of the man’s Mustachioed Machismo directly into your brain as possible. The very first time Bandit outwits a state trooper simply by driving over a median and parking behind a bank, Reynolds pulls the car up to the camera, mugs briefly, and speeds off. That is Maximum Burt, people. And if you’re not on board at this point, you never will be.
Reynolds and Field famously got into each other on the set of this movie, and it occurs to me about halfway through Smokey and the Bandit that what we’re seeing here is their first date, where they made out in a Trans Am at a hundred miles an hour while Jackie Gleason chases them down in half a car, comically shaking his fist and being extremely unpleasant with African-Americans. I can forgive it being a little Looney Tunes because that’s precisely what makes it so much fun. Sally and Burt trying not to hump on camera while every police car in America crashes around them is just icing on the cake. And by the power of the Class XII Porn Star Moustache, for 96 minutes, Burt Reynolds truly is a living God.