BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Leofwine_draca CONVOY is a middling truck chase movie from director Sam Peckinpah, who by all accounts was off his head on drugs for much of the filming. It's no surprise that the resultant film feels cheap and choppy, with a plot that seems cobbled together from various unrelated strands and a distinct lack of excitement despite the proliferation of stunts and high-octane action. Kris Kristofferson is the unremarkable lead, failing to ignite a romance with the unremarkable Ali McGraw, and seconding better actors like Burt Young to support. Ernest Borgnine is the best thing about the film as the antagonist sheriff villain. The stunts are cool, but the running time is too long and outside of the action it stalls. It doesn't help that the film just isn't very well directed either; for example, the repeated use of slow motion in the bar-room brawl just feels ridiculous.

grantss Three truckers are setting off across country when they are harassed by a local Sheriff. The Sheriff is happy to use his power to extort money from anyone who he runs into, and he has a particular dislike for truckers. He and one of the truckers, "Rubber Duck", have a long-standing feud. This boils over when the truckers refuse to give in to one of his extortion attempts and get into a fight with the Sheriff and the local police. This results in a cross-state, even inter- state chase, and grows in magnitude as more and more trucks join the rebels, forming a convoy.Pretty weak movie. Generally just one long car/truck chase scene, with little escapades along the way. Had some potential to make a statement about freedom and taking a stand against fascism (maybe a Vanishing Point with trucks) but hardly touches either subject. Instead it's one of those mindless elongated cross country car chase movies. Most perplexing of all, this is directed by Sam Peckinpah, the man who gave us The Wild Bunch, Cross of Iron, Straw Dogs and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. His movies usually have solid plots, good themes and are quite gritty and violent. This has none of those traits. Why he chose to direct this, I don't know. He must have needed the money.

virek213 I cannot think of any other film in history that did so well at the box office (even with such universally bad reviews) but which had such a bad reputation during its making that its director, the admittedly cantankerous Sam Peckinpah, was basically exiled one more time from an industry that he had so shaken up just a few short years before. But that's what was to be had from his 1978 film CONVOY. And unfortunately, it was a cocaine problem Peckinpah had that was so extreme during its making that when word got around, he could find absolutely no work again in Hollywood until 1982, when he got a shot at a comeback by doing THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND.Scripted by B.W.L. Norton (of CISCO PIKE fame) and based very loosely on the 1975-76 C.W. McCall C&W/pop crossover hit of the same name, CONVOY, though originally intended as a congenial truck-driving comedy along the lines of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, somehow evolved into what might be called a modern-day version of THE WILD BUNCH, only on wheels, and with a lot less violence. Kris Kristofferson, who did a great turn as Billy The Kid in the director's 1973 Western masterpiece PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, stars as Rubber Duck, an interstate truck driver who is trying to make a living off of his profession but feels he is being hemmed in by the 55 MPH speed limit. And when he gets a lot of his fellow truck drivers, and a curious journalist (Ali MacGraw), involved, it is really quite reluctantly, until he runs afoul of a very nasty New Mexico sheriff (Ernest Borgnine) who's not only got a thing against truck drivers of Kristofferson's ilk, but even a latent streak of racism as well, when he and some fellow lawman tangle with a black trucker, Spider Mike (Franklin Ajaye). Kristofferson and MacGraw get involved, but Kristofferson knows it is not meant to be, especially with Borgnine constantly breathing down his neck. Various huge action and chase scenes involving what seem to be a thousand big rigs and hundreds of cars, plus a couple of choppers thrown into the mix, lead up to Kristofferson challenging Borgnine at the crossing between Texas and Mexico, in which Borgnine and his cronies open fire of Kristofferson's big rig, causing it and him to fall with explosive results into the Rio Grande. But Kristofferson isn't quite as dead as everyone thinks….CONVOY ran well over budget and schedule during its making through much of the spring and summer of 1977, principally because of the director's aforementioned cocaine addiction, which almost led to his firing at a few points. And even as he was editing the film, with Garth Craven, the English editor who still knew Peckinpah's action/editing style the best, when it was released in the summer of 1978, the director, unlike on previous films, didn't even bother to contend with the recutting that producer Michael Deeley did on it. The subsequent exile from Hollywood that Peckinpah suffered because of CONVOY wasn't without incident, either; in May 1979, while living in Montana, he had a heart attack that nearly killed him then and there. By the time he got back to work on THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, he was a very depleted man; and though he made a concerted effort to quit his bad habits, it turned out to be too little, too late.To CONVOY itself, now: For a very long time, hearing the stories about Peckinpah's "white powder" madness during its making, I was very hard on this film, considering it his worst. After a few times watching it again, even though its flaws are still there (the attempts at SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT-type comedy don't really work), the fact is that, under whatever substances or pressures, he was able to work as well with big rigs and all other things automotive in CONVOY as he had ever been with horses on his innovative Westerns. The action scenes, structured around the admittedly flimsy premise of a novelty record, are still shockingly well done, with the requisite multiple POV editing style and intercutting of slow motion and regular action that are part-and-parcel of his style. And he did get some good performances from the three principals, along with a cast that included Madge Sinclair (from the epic TV miniseries "Roots"), Cassie Yates, Burt Young (who had been in ROCKY, and Peckinpah's 1975 action film THE KILLER ELITE), Seymour Cassel (as the New Mexico governor), and Jorge Russek (as the racist Tex-Mex sheriff Tiny Alvarez).Grievously flawed as this film was, and as "coked out" as Peckinpah was during its production, there are still things about CONVOY that make it a film well worth seeing. It's not THE WILD BUNCH or STRAW DOGS, to be sure; but just for the sheer ability of Peckinpah to conjure up a lot from what was very little to start with, it does more than most CGI-choked action films today. Just on that basis alone, it deserves the '7' rating I'm giving it here.

Steve Pulaski C.W. McCall's 1975 hit song "Convoy" is one of the most unique and different songs to ever come out of the country genre. Its unique blend of citizens band radio (CB radio) dialog combined with a catchy, spoken-word story about a group of rebellious truckers that decide to disobey all road signs, law enforcement, and trucker policies to just be one with the road, their trucks, and their individualism, which eventually results in the creation of a trucking convoy makes for a song that does nothing but get ones energy flowing and their excitement flourishing. Throw in inanely catchy instrumentation, trucker lingo appropriately imitating life on the road, and McCall's fittingly deep vocals and you have a song that just works on sight and creates a wonderful and original vibe.Adapting McCall's novelty song into a film bearing the same name was a wise choice because the song is so much a story and full of sometimes ambiguous lingo that showing how something like a trucker rebellion would play out if it were to happen only makes sense. The film follows McCall's hit nicely, as it focuses on a deviant trucker nicknamed "Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson), who bands together with his road-friends "Love Machine" (later nicknamed "Pig Pen," played by Burt Young), and "Spider Mike" (Franklyn Ajaye) to protest the corrupt ways of Sheriff Lyle "Cottonmouth" Wallace (Ernest Borgnine), by driving their trucks at top speed to the state line of New Mexico and as far as they can possibly go. Also on board with "Rubber Duck" as a passenger is Melissa (Ali MacGraw), who initially tempts him by driving without pants in a Jaguar convertible at top speed down the road. The gaggle of truckers eventually start a convoy, made up of truckers from all over the country, "long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus," among many others who are riding in protest of police corruption and the pursuit of individuality.Sam Peckinpah directs Convoy with a necessary sense of fun, gusto, and clear enjoyment, filming many shots of truckers and their drivers flooring it down interstates, weaving in and out of traffic, and even working to stop law-enforcement by using two eighteen-wheelers to crush a police cruiser flying down the highway at top speed. In addition, Peckinpah works to develop the relationship these truckers have with their roads, but also each other, even if their friends exist predominately as voices on the other end of a scratchy CB radio, spouting slang and vague phrases at each other hoping to achieve a goal only a select few will understand. The individualism in the film is nearly unmatchable, as we see that "Rubber Duck," "Pig Pen," and "Spider Mike" have a genuine love for what they do and, as McCall stated in his song, "ain't nothing' gonna get in their way." On top of that, the film is filled with talents that are fun to watch, specifically Kristofferson and Borgnine, two instantly recognizable actors in roles they were built to play. Watching the film and seeing their relationship develop over time is a real treat because you can see the way each of them respond to each others quips and acts of deviancy and disobedience. On top of that, the supporting cast of Young and Ajaye are entertaining, especially in the early scenes in the film, where the central focus is on their dialog with each other. Last, but certainly not least, is MacGraw, who does a beautiful job of holding her own, being the only female lead in the entire film.Convoy also has the ability to surprise by becoming a surprisingly deeper story during the film's last act, addressing issues of racism, opposition to individuality and rebellion, and corruption within a system with a sense of honesty and seriousness. For a film that bears such an asinine premise and a cheesy aesthetic, it's easy to not expect this particular film to bear such a notion of competence in terms of illustrating a moral. But that is only one of several ways Peckinpah's Convoy surprises as it lives up to a terrific song and terrific idea in an entertaining manner.Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Burt Young, Franklin Ajaye, and Ernest Borgnine. Directed by: Sam Peckinpah.