Viking Night: White Lightning
By Bruce Hall
April 26, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
No, White Lightning is actually a whole different animal. It is an old school, low budget action thriller circa 1973, starring the one and only Burt Reynolds - replete in all his pre moustache glory. Perhaps this means nothing to you, and if so, I’m terribly sorry for the sad, hollow life you clearly lead. Or perhaps it’s not your fault, because you’re just too young to understand.
For that, I can only blame society. For if you Google recent photos of the man, you will see a frail, dessicated husk - more beef jerky than badass. Don’t let this fool you, though. ONce upon a time, Burt Reynolds was the biggest movie star in America. So gather all ye round, and I shall explain why.
Even before the moustache, Burt Reynolds was a major star, as well as one of the leading sex symbols of his time. Men wanted to be him, despite their universal unworthiness. Women, meanwhile, were known to become spontaneously pregnant in his presence. Reynolds’ famous nude photo spread in Cosmopolitan was credited (by me) with a nationwide population spike in 1973. Some say it was the moustache, and that with it his power became unrivalled. Prophecy tells us this will remain so until the Stache Wars, when Reynolds, Nick Offerman and Tom Selleck will join Stache to save humanity from destruction (any time now, guys).
But that is a story for another day. Today, we’re going to talk about Gator McKlusky, a down on his luck moonshiner serving hard time for the aforementioned shining of moons. It turns out the government is willing to look the other way on that whole bootlegging thing, provided they’re given a taste of the action (for those not in the know, moonshine is like vodka that people who wear pajamas to Wal-Mart make in a bathtub). It’s the same type of big-government corruption that outlaws like Thomas Jefferson and Gator McKlusky have fought since the dawn of time.
So Gator, like every patriot before him, doesn’t play that game. Of course this lands him in prison, but that doesn’t make it any less manly. And when his brother is murdered by a corrupt sheriff, Gator literally punches his way out of prison.
Of course he’s immediately captured, but that doesn’t make it any less manly.
Gator seems to be really well liked in prison. Even after he tries to escape, they kind of just pat him on the back and tell him to chill. I can only assume this is because for Burt Reynolds, even when it’s not present, the Stache is present. So, not willing to be cowed, Gator uses what I’m sure is a completely fictitious legal loophole to get himself out of prison. Ostensibly, he’ll be working for the Federal government, trying to collect incriminating evidence on a certain Sheriff J.C. Connors (Ned Beatty) - the very same man who murdered Gator’s brother.
Connors has a stranglehold on the local booze market, and the Feds seem eager to bring him down. They’re so eager, in fact, that they set Gator up with a tricked out set of wheels and then cut him loose with no supervision whatsoever. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume there was little to no law enforcement consultation on White Lightning. None of the cop related things that happen in this film feel like things that would actually happen, and I say that as a man who can accept a lot in that regard.
This is not a police procedural. This is not a crime drama. This is not even really a thriller. This is a brisk, deliberately paced revenge flick fueled entirely by Reynold’s retina scorching charisma and laconic charm. White Lightning had a director, and his name was Joseph Sargent. He’s best known The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which is a great film. But who cares? White Lightning also had a screenwriter, but again, who cares? I’m not even convinced this film really had a script. It feels as though they just turned on the cameras, and let Burt walk around borrowing things from some people, punching others, and having sex with the rest.
Gator more or less charms his way through the entire story, and even the people he crosses seem half-hearted in their retribution. Like Reynolds himself, Gator McKlusky seems like the kind of guy who’s got such a surplus of charisma, even when he steals from you or beats you up, you’d still kind of like to have a beer with him. At one point in his quest for vengeance, Gator takes an undercover job with a local moonshiner, in an attempt to get close to the Sheriff. Almost immediately, Gator (literally) eats the man’s breakfast, (totally) sleeps with his wife, and when confronted, basically says:
“Well, maybe you should have put a ring on her finger.”
And the guy reluctantly tolerates this. I don’t blame him; if someone did that to me, I’d probably stab them. Unless it was Burt Reynolds, and then I’d probably thank him for his advice. Hell, when Gator is badly injured later in the film, even his wounds don’t seem all that serious about doing him in. Gator lives in a universe where everyone and everything is in awe of him, down to the atomic level.
Of course, it’s a little different with Connors. Once the Sheriff senses someone on his trail, things get pretty real pretty fast. And while he’s largely absent for the first half of the story, Beatty makes the most of his time onscreen, actually delivering some of the film’s more entertaining dialogue. That’s not to overlook the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic nature of his character OR of the municipality he is sworn to defend. But this was obviously a different time, and such degenerate behavior (sarcasm = ON) out of an elected official would seem peculiar and out of place in today’s world.
But if you can suspend your disbelief for long enough to believe in Gator McKlusky, you’ll probably notice Ned Beatty working on a slightly different level than the rest of the cast. Connors is a soft spoken Southern gentleman who rarely raises his voice, even when he’s blithely torturing elderly men for information on Gator. Take off his badge, and he could be any other paunchy, middle aged bus driver or hardware shop owner. Beatty didn’t have to work as hard as he did to infuse this character with genuine hubris but he does, while inexplicably remaining as underrated as he is.
It’s for all these reasons that White Lightning is such an easy, undemanding watch. This is really the first of the iconic Guy Films that Reynolds would make throughout the 1970s, and they were essentially what you’d get if you could successfully translate testosterone into English. All of them would feature some variation of Reynolds wearing tight jeans, flexing his pecs, smoking cigarettes, drinking whisky, driving fast cars, snirking and punching his way to (and sometimes through) justice.
And as I said before, even when he didn’t have the Stache, you could still...SENSE it.
There isn’t anything remarkable about White Lightning on paper. It’s the kind of stuff you couldn’t do on television in 1973, but now appears daily in video games marketed to children. What makes it work though, is the unrelenting vortex of animal magnetism that is Burt Reynolds, and Ned Beatty’s lifelong tendency to turn in quality work at Second Fiddle. And...probably the Stache. I assume when Reynolds finally passes from this world, his moustache will live on, rejoining the fabric of the very universe it helped to create.
I’m hard pressed to think of an actor today who could carry a dumb action movie entirely on his shoulders, willing it to greatness the way great quarterbacks can win regardless of the dopes you surround them with. Reynolds was one of those people, and White Lightning - while by no means a great film, still stands a testament to his greatness.
All hail the Stache.