by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
CAST: Goldie Hawn, Ben Johnson, Michael Sacks, William Atherton
MY RATING: 6/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 87% Certified Fresh
PLOT: A young wife breaks her husband out of prison in 1969 Texas so he can help reclaim their infant from a foster family. The ensuing media circus takes everyone by surprise.
Watching Steven Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express is like looking at one of those historical medieval tapestries of fierce battles, created by artists who didn’t yet know how to depict perspective. There is plenty of action on display, but everything looks and feels flat. The film took an award at Cannes that year for Best Screenplay, probably (at least partly) in recognition of how it shies away from a traditional Hollywood resolution, but even its downbeat ending is reminiscent of earlier, more resonant films like Bonnie and Clyde [1967] or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969]. As a stepping stone in the career of an eventual legend, it’s worth a view. As a stand-alone film, it never quite achieves liftoff.
Based on real events, The Sugarland Express tells the story of Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn at her irrepressible, bubbly best), the young wife of prison inmate Clovis Poplin (William Atherton). During a conjugal visit, just four months before Clovis is to be released, Lou Jean boldly busts him out because she needs his help to reclaim their infant, Langston, from a foster home. Lou Jean herself has just finished serving time at a women’s prison, and the state, probably very wisely, determined Langston was better off with a foster family. But they need to hurry because “I bet those Methodists are gettin’ ready to move out of state.” Lou Jean’s delivery of “Methodists” tells you all you need to know about her feelings on the matter.
After Lou Jean breaks him out, a comedy of errors ends up in a situation where she and Clovis have hijacked a police cruiser and are holding a police officer at gunpoint. They demand to be left alone while they drive to Sugarland, Texas, and retrieve their son, at which point they’ll release their hostage.
Now, this has all the makings of a smart, character-driven “road” movie, instigated by desperate people with no real plans for their end-game. But for reasons I can’t put a finger on, nothing ever happens in the film that got me on the edge of my seat, figuratively speaking. I fully comprehended the situation intellectually, but the film never got to me at an emotional level.
Could it be because we never really learn a lot about Lou Jean and Clovis in order to make them more empathetic? No, I don’t think so, because over the course of the film, we’ll hear all about their past histories and previous brushes with the law. The very fact they’re executing this plan to essentially kidnap Langston is proof of how unfit they are as parents.
I think part of the problem with the movie is…
…I’ve been sitting here for the last fifteen minutes trying to finish that sentence. I can report that the film didn’t get to me emotionally, but I am struggling to explain why. Could it be as simple as I think they’re not such great people, but the film seems to be siding with them as the movie progresses? I mean, the movie HAS to side with them at least partially in order to make their journey mean anything. Look at Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Bank robbers, lawbreakers, but clearly the good guys because, duh, Paul Newman and Robert Redford are playing them.
So, maybe it has to do with the casting? The Sugarland Express had one of America’s sweethearts as a woman willing to resort to kidnapping just to commit another kidnapping in the name of maternal love. So, we’ve gotta root for her, right? But then we see her behaving in the most inane, brainless way for so much of the movie. I found it difficult to side with her when I just wanted to, forgive the expression, slap some sense into her.
What about Clovis? I could side with him. He appears to have misgivings throughout the entire film, right up to the point of no return. But the way he willingly goes along with the scheme because, dammit, it’s his wife…something about that also turned me off on him. There are moments I felt sorry for him, for them both, because I could see where this movie was headed early on. But that empathy wasn’t enough to make me feel a catharsis of tragic energy at the film’s finale. There’s just something about Clovis and Lou Jean that wouldn’t allow me to get too worked up over their fate.
I guess I identified most with the kidnapped police officer, Slide (Michael Sacks). Maybe too much. From the beginning, Slide is begging them to drop their weapons and turn themselves over to the police. At first, he looks like he’s just following his training. But then the movie progresses, and doggone it, he starts to like these two loonies, even though Clovis handcuffs him and even shoots at him a couple of times in the heat of the moment. He can see where this road ends, and he pleads with them not to do exactly what the Texas state troopers expect them to do, because he doesn’t want to see them dead. Because Slide never stops imploring the Poplins to see sense and do the smart thing, I guess he’s who I sided with for the entire movie. (Well, him and his superior, Captain Tanner [Ben Johnson], who also doesn’t want to see them die.)
But…isn’t that the wrong way to approach this movie? I shouldn’t be siding with the cops, for cryin’ out loud, should I? At least, not in this movie. Discuss.
From a technical standpoint, it is pretty cool to see how Spielberg, in only his second film, was able to marshal vast resources to create some arresting imagery. The sight of what looks like literally hundreds of cop cars following the Poplins is a deceptively difficult feat, logistically speaking. There’s a tense shootout in a used car lot that would have been right at home in The French Connection. And everywhere, there’s bits of humor that made me smile. From the elderly couple abandoned on the road (long story) to the solution of how to get Lou Jean to a toilet while in the middle of an extended police chase, Spielberg constantly pokes us in the ribs. If this had gotten to the hands of someone like John Landis, it’s easy to see how this could have been turned into an out-and-out comedy with thriller elements, instead of the other way around.
One other aspect I did like was the media circus that blew up around the Poplins’ plight. I’m sure it is yet another link to previous anti-heroic films, but while I was watching it, I was reminded of only one film: Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers [1994]. The outpouring of affection from the general public for these two, let’s face it, outlaws was both funny and sobering at the same time. It would have been interesting to see a scene or two at the end of the film as an epilogue, so we could get a reading on what the public thought about how the police should have handled the situation.
If comparing The Sugarland Express to most of Spielberg’s later films, it certainly comes up lacking, no question. As a lifelong Spielberg fan, I am compelled to say it SHOULDN’T be compared to his later films because it was made before he’d had a chance to hone his skills and become the populist/mainstream film icon he is today. Look carefully at the two-dimensional storytelling and you can see the outlines of what was coming around the bend for this modern-day master.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 