CONVOY (1978) ***1/2 I would love to drink of whatever they drank to decide to turn a two-minute country song, half of which is a CB radio monologue, into a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. That ain't half of it-I want some of what they gave Sam Peckinpah to make him agree that it was a good idea. It gets stranger. Forget the first twenty minutes when they float a decoy plot. The truth begins to assert itself in the subsequent desert shots of proud, venerable, workhorse proletarian trucks rising through the desert to the accompaniment of classical music. Mud has never looked so good, trucks have never before even flirted with this mythological context in which they so clearly belong. The mist, the motion. It's a poem masquerading as a movie. Take Johnny Guitar as a point of reference, along with the political beatitudes collected near the middle. A political poem with good music. Who better as the protagonist in a the-revolution-that-could-have-been-but-wasn't-because-you-guys-weren't-where-you-were-supposed-to-be than Kris Kristofferson, arguably the greatest country songwriter of all time (yeah I heard of Hank, he was great but Kris is complex but simple). His beard is impeccable, how can anyone else even have a beard after that, but his eyes define the purity of the message. Ali MacGraw would seem well cast as his love interest (ok, one of many) sidekick, but she never gets past her bad haircut, even when they put her in the wet t-shirt emblematic of the post-The Deep Hollywood era. I don't know who would have worked better-anyone, I guess, but especially Patti Smith. Once you entirely let the plot go and immerse in the baptism of the symbolism, the grandeur of the ambition is intoxicating (even though they could have had more beer and pot floating around). They do spell a bit too much out, suggesting some lack of faith in the going-into-hibernation Morrison-lizards that were surely the only reason to make something like this. The dark ages approacheth, let us burn the last of the light quickly to illuminate as much as we can, lest it all be forgotten. The shots of Ernest Borgnine (who played a similar role in no less than Johnny Guitar) at the end, are wonderful, didn't change anything coming, weren't designed to, he's just laughing at it. That they occasionally paste in a few words of the original C.W. McCall song is absolutely hysterical, as if he envisioned anything like this. No one did, but sometimes you have to leave the cards and walk, or escape via lawng-hared-frien's of Jesus communal bus while making out with your girlfriend.
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