Convoy
It starts as a romance of the road, a fleeting glance through the wound-down window of a truck to a passing open-top sports car on an Arizona highway in the heat of June, the transitory flirtation of big rig trucker Martin “Rubber Duck” Penwald and photographer Melissa on her way to shoot a wedding, a momentary dalliance spoiled when Sheriff “Dirty” Lyall Wallace gets run off the road as a consequence and takes his revenge at the next pit-stop.
Rafael’s Glide-In the known hang-out of the truckers, Wallace shows up with his men to take the opportunity to target Rubber Duck and his friends, threatening Spider Mike with arrest on a trumped-up charge which will mean he’ll miss the birth of his child; a fight ensues, the police outnumbered and the truckers heading out cross-country through rough terrain, word moving ahead of their actions and drawing attention and companions, a growing convoy moving east to New Mexico then south to the border.
His resume including Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and Cross of Iron, it was in 1978 that director Sam Peckinpah enjoyed his greatest commercial success with Convoy, inspired by a crossover country and western novelty song of 1975 performed by C W McCall, the story of which provided the backbone of B W L Norton’s script, with Kris Kristofferson as “Rubber Duck,” Ernest Borgnine as “Dirty” Lyle and Ali MacGraw as Melissa.
A gasoline odyssey of slow motion bar fights, dusty desert roads, friends in low places and lonesome tunes of lost love and rolling wheels, the cast which includes Burt Young and Madge Sinclair as truckers Love Machine and Black Widow are led by an understated Kristofferson who lets his tight jeans do the talking, finding himself cast a figurehead called upon to air the grievances of the trucking community, a folk hero who never asked for the responsibility and who avoids making promises he knows he cannot keep, a contrast to Governor Jerry Haskins (Seymour Cassel) who follows in his wake.
Surprisingly reflective and subdued for a Peckinpah despite the occasional superb and inevitably destructive stuntwork, Convoy slows at the midpoint where the truckers pause for the night and the consequences of their actions catch up with them, but with the stars of the film the trucks it’s a testament to the quality of the ensemble that they establish their characters as well as they do, though it is frustrating that Melissa never becomes more than passive witness and chronicler beyond her obvious role as love interest.
Restored for Blu-ray by StudioCanal, their new edition of Convoy is so packed it might take a truck to deliver all the goods, with new and archive commentaries, interviews, video essays, a featurette on cut scenes, a look at the cameos and in-jokes incorporated in the film, trailers, television and radio spots, and multiple galleries containing over four hundred production and promotional images.
