The Sugarland Express (Steven Spielberg, USA, 1974) August 20, 2006
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Comedy, 1970s, Drama, Film reviews, Crime , trackback
Dir. Steven Spielberg; screenplay by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins; starring Goldie Hawn, William Atherton, Michael Sacks
Steven Spielberg’s first theatrical film (although ‘Duel’ was released theatrically in Europe) marks the director’s return to the open road. It isn’t surprising Spielberg got the job to direct this cross-country chase movie, since he had so beautifully brought the ‘road’ tot life in ‘Duel’. Yet, this true story of Lou Jean and her lover Clovis, who take a cop hostage in order to get back their baby, doesn’t have the technical ingenuity that made ‘Duel’ so much fun, or the comic undercurrent that made ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ and ‘Cannonball Run II’ such crowd-pleasers. It’s largely down to a muddled script that can’t strike a balance between melodrama and comedy, or social comment and familial loyalty. Certainly, the young Spielberg struggles to get to grips with his characters, and by the film’s end, you are left with the sense that you never got to know the people who’ve you’ve just invested all that time in.
In all, it’s one of the director’s lesser known films and for good reason. His trademarks aren’t evident, and while, if you delve into the story’s ideals, you’ll find the subjects Spielberg would investigate later in his career, this was a project used as a means to another end. After all, a year later he would make ‘Jaws’ with Sugarland’s producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown.
‘The Sugarland Express’ isn’t a bad film, it’s just a very average one, certainly for a director of Spielberg’s quality (and considering within three years he’d made two of his masterpieces – ‘Jaws’ and ‘Close Encounters’). The film is noteworthy for an excellent performance from Goldie Hawn.
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