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.

Major Dundee (1965)

It is 1864 in New Mexico.  Major Amos Dundee (Charleton Heston) and his column have come upon the site of a massacre.  Sierra Charriba, an Apache chief, has been terrorizing the countryside.  Dundee decides that he must track down the Apache and recover the children that were abducted.  With the Civil War in full swing, troops to counter Charriba are limited.  However, there are Confederate prisoners-of-war available; Captain Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris), a one-time friend of Dundee, is among them.  Dundee sets out with a mix of the fort garrison soldiers, Confederate prisoners, volunteer criminals, and civilian volunteers to chase the Apache through Mexico.  On this odyssey, they are ambushed, fight among themselves, battle the French forces in Mexico, find love, get drunk, fiesta, experience loss, and battle the Apache.

In addition to Heston and Harris, James Coburn plays Sam Potts, a one-armed scout, Brock Peters is Sgt. Aesop, the leader of the colored troops, and Jim Hutton is Lt. Graham of the artillery.  Lt. Ryan (Michael Anderson Jr.) provides narration throughout the movie as he records the events in his diary.  The events start in October 1864 and the final scene takes place in April 1865, after the Civil War had ended though they don't know it.

The movie is a hodgepodge with too many characters and too much going on.  Where this complexity would be great in a book or a miniseries, it is distracting in a movie.  According to IMDb, the script was still a work in progress during shooting and Sam Peckinpah was mostly drunk to where Heston was required to do a fair amount of the directing.

There is a gem to be had in this story and with these characters, but Peckinpah and Heston failed to find it.  Mediocre.