CAST:
Peter Fonda,
Susan George,
Adam Roarke,
Vic Morrow

SCRIPT:
Leigh Chapman,
Antonio Santean

PHOTOGRAPHY:
Michael D. Margulies

MUSIC:
Jimmie Haskell

EDITING:
Christopher Holmes

Synopsis:

The remarkable Larry Rayder is a passionate fan of powerful cars and crazy chases, who in the mid-70s of the last century would have liked to take part in the famous NASCAR races.

He is an excellent driver, but he lacks a large sum of money in order to realize this wish. Therefore, Larry with his mechanic and friend Deke Summers decides to secure the money for participating in the races by robbing a supermarket run by family man George Stanton. Deke breaks into Stanton's home and takes his wife and daughter hostage, while Larry steals $150,000 from the supermarket safe.

Although they manage to buy a top racing car, a 1966 Chevrolet Impala, with this money, their escape will not go as they imagined. On their way, the attractive Mary Coombs, a temperamental and unrestrained girl with whom Larry was in a short-term relationship, will stand in her way, and she will join them on the run from the police.

The police pursuit is led by the unconventional Captain Everett Franklin, a man who is constantly at odds with his superiors. And after the escapees trade in the Chevrolet for a much faster 1969 Dodge Charger R/T 440, Captain Franklin will begin to realize that the outdated police patrol cars are no match for Larry's speed.

The action crime film by director John Hough, the author of a series of correct but generally not particularly memorable exploitative works such as the children's film Escape to the Witch Mountain from 1975 and the sequel to the excellent Triumphs of a Man Called Horse from 1983, is based on the popular novel with the original title The Chase (Hunting) by the American trivia writer Richard Unekis, a work that was later published under the title Pursuit.

The only road movie of B-director John Hough, who in 1972, among other things, with the collaboration of Andrea Bianchi and Antonio Margheriti, directed the entertaining adaptation of Treasure Island with Orson Wells in the lead role, and at the end of the 70s and during the 80s he also worked on the popular TV series The New Avengers and Dempsey and Makepeace. Moreover, in 1974, it was the most successful film of the 20th Century Fox studio, and during its three years in cinema distribution, it earned a fairly respectable 15 million dollars for that time.

With very dynamic and attractively directed scenes of car chases, which many consider the film to be among the most significant representatives of this type of achievement, alongside hits such as Peter Yates' Bullitt, Walter Hill's Driver and Richard C. Sarafian's Vanishing Point, a very good narrative rhythm and picturesque characters and their entertaining interrelationships, very significant credits for the film's success and its cult status belong to the main actor Peter Fonda.

He is usually striking and quite convincing in the character of Larry Rayder, and with the freshness and energy of his performance he manages to compensate for certain shortcomings in the characterization of the character, as well as the general pattern of the story and dramatic construction. The same can be said for the playful and appropriately moved performance of Susan George (Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, Richard Fleischer's Mandingo), while as a whole it is a film whose essential feature is the reliance on stereotypes and conventions in all segments.

The dialogues are to a good extent banal, but the sequences of unrestrained chases and stunts are excellent, the natural locations in California are excellently shot and used, and Peter Fonda manages to bring something of the image of Wyatt from Dennis Hopper's Naked in the Saddle into his character.

Text author: Josip Grozdanić

color, 93'