Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

"Boy when I get home I'm gonna punch your mother in the mouth." I mean, come on. Where else are you getting lines like that? Jackie Gleason delivers it with such committed, apoplectic fury that you can't help but howl. That one line alone tells you everything you need to know about Smokey and the Bandit. It's loud, it's daft, it's gloriously, unapologetically itself, and I love every single second of it.

I'll just come out and say it: this might be the greatest film ever made. Yes, I know how that sounds. No, I'm not taking it back. This is my absolute guilty pleasure, the film I'll drop everything for when it comes on, the one I'll champion down the pub until last orders. It asks almost nothing of you beyond a willingness to have a good time, and in return it gives you one of the most purely enjoyable ninety-odd minutes in the history of moving pictures.

The setup is as corny as it gets. Get a truckload of Coors from Texas to Georgia in under 28 hours, dodge every cop in the American South along the way. That's it. That's the film. And honestly, thank God for that, because the simplicity is the point. Nobody's sitting down for Smokey and the Bandit looking for moral complexity. You're here for the Pontiac Trans Am, the moustache, and Burt Reynolds grinning like he's the luckiest man alive, which, fair enough, he probably was.

Reynolds is magnetic in a way that's genuinely hard to explain to anyone who only knows him from later in his career. There's a looseness to him here, a real swagger that never tips into arrogance because he's clearly having the time of his life. Sally Field is an absolute joy alongside him, the chemistry between them fizzing from the moment she jumps in the car. You completely buy it, which matters more than you'd think given how paper-thin the script is in places.

And then there's Jackie Gleason as Sheriff Buford T. Justice. Honestly, Gleason is operating on a different plane entirely. He's so committed to the bit, so magnificently over the top, that he somehow transcends the material. Every scene he's in crackles. The insults he hurls at his own son, the barely contained rage, the sheer indignity of a man who cannot accept that he's losing. It's a comic performance that deserves far more recognition than it gets.

The stunts hold up brilliantly, by the way. There's a real, tactile satisfaction to watching actual cars do actual things at actual speed, and Hal Needham, who came up through stunt work himself, clearly knew exactly what he was doing behind the camera. No digital trickery, no safety net, just metal and tarmac and a whole lot of nerve. If you've seen The Cannonball Run, you'll know Needham and Reynolds would bottle this lightning again a few years later, but there's something about the original that nothing quite recaptures.

The soundtrack is another thing entirely. That Jerry Reed title track is embedded in my brain permanently and I have absolutely zero complaints about that. It sets the tone perfectly. This is a film about freedom, about open roads and two fingers up to authority, and the music carries that feeling right the way through.

Look, the plot is corny as hell. The script is classic 70s, which means it's equal parts brilliant and baffling. There are jokes that land and jokes that clunk, characters who exist purely to be driven past, and a romantic subplot that's basically held together with goodwill and charm. None of that matters. What matters is that Smokey and the Bandit is one of those rare films that never gets old, not for me anyway. Every watch feels like the first. Every Gleason outburst hits just as hard. Every jump in that black and gold Trans Am still makes me grin like an idiot.

Four stars, and I'd argue the case for five on the right evening.

Rating: ★★★★  | Year: 1977  | Watched: 2025-04-08

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Watch in the UK
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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Hal Needham: The Cannonball Run (1981)
More with Burt Reynolds: White Lightning (1973) · The Cannonball Run (1981)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)