Convoy (1978)

Rubber Duck (Kris Kristofferson) was a trucker when the speed limit was changed to 55 miles per hour.  Between the new speed limit and the regulations on how many hours per day could be spent driving, some truckers were having trouble staying solvent.  This was made all the worse by sheriffs like Dirty Lyle Wallace (Ernest Borgnine).  Dirty Lyle used CB chatter to set up speed traps where he would let the truckers go for a bribe; that way their insurance premiums wouldn't increase.

Rubber Duck was at an Arizona truck stop when Dirty Lyle started rousting Spider Mike (Franklyn Ajaye) and threatening to arrest him.  The Duck moved to intervene and a fight broke out.  Soon, all the truckers joined into a brawl against three police officers.  The truckers skedaddled, disabling the police cars on the way out of the lot.  Soon, a line of trucks drove east across Arizona and into New Mexico and Texas.  Many others got word and soon more trucks joined.  It was a convoy!

The movie doesn't make a lick of sense.  Somehow, the states are powerless to stop the convoy and the governor of New Mexico (Seymour Cassel) wanted to negotiate with Rubber Duck.  Negotiate about what?  When Spider Mike heads home - leaving the convoy - he got arrested and jailed.  Well, he did participate in that brawl.  In response, many of the truckers went to the town where he was jailed and flattened buildings, destroyed a police car, and crashed through the jail.  Um, okay.

Now they knew they were in big trouble.  Duck suggested crossing into Mexico.  So, he led the way but all the other trucks were cutoff by an ice cream man accident.  Alone, Duck approached the dinky bridge that crossed a river - presumably the Rio Grande - but Dirty Lyle was waiting on the other side with an armored vehicle.  In Mexico?  Huh?  Nonetheless, Duck raced across the bridge and the machineguns opened fire.  The wreckage plunged into the river.  So much for Rubber Duck?

Melissa (Ali MacGraw) was a traveling photographer who had a run-in with Rubber Duck in the opening and then encountered him again at the Arizona truck stop.  She needed a ride.  Despite the brawl, she climbed into Duck's truck and became part of the convoy, often nagging Duck about the ongoing events.  She repeatedly declined offers to get out.  Like most of the other characters, she also acts like some great injustice is occurring and Duck should make demands.  Huh?

Amazingly, this was Sam Pekinpah's most financially successful movie.  Of course, trucker movies were all the rage in the mid to late 70s (e.g., Smokey and the Bandit) and CB culture was everywhere for a time.  However, the movie has not aged well.  It's thin on plot and often inexplicable.  Why are the police so stymied by the convoy?  It feels like a chunk of the movie that explained the grievances of the truckers ended up on the cutting room floor.

Mediocre.  Skip.