The Sugarland Express (1974)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Steven Spielberg

Writers:

Steven Spielberg (story) and
Hal Barwood (story) ...

Release Date:

5 April 1974 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Crime | Drama

Tagline:

The true story of a girl who took on all of Texas...and almost won.

Plot:

Lou-Jean, a blonde woman, tells her husband, who is imprisoned, to escape. They plan to kidnap their own child...

Plot Keywords:

Hostage | Texas | Police | Prison | Shootout

Awards:

1 win & 2 nominations

Cast

Goldie Hawn	...	Lou Jean Poplin
Ben Johnson	...	Captain Harlin Tanner
Michael Sacks	...	Patrolman Maxwell Slide
William Atherton	...	Clovis Michael Poplin
Gregory Walcott	...	Patrolman Ernie Mashburn
Steve Kanaly	...	Patrolman Jessup
Louise Latham	...	Mrs. Looby
Harrison Zanuck	...	Baby Langston Poplin
A.L. Camp	...	Mr. Alvin T. Nocker
Jessie Lee Fulton	...	Mrs. Nocker
Dean Smith	...	Russ Berry
Ted Grossman	...	Dietz
Bill Thurman	...	Hunter
Kenneth Hudgins	...	Standby
Buster Daniels	...	Drunk (as Buster Danials)

Also Known As:

Carte Blanche (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

110 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Australia:M (video rating) | Iceland:12 | Brazil:12 | Portugal:M/12 | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Chile:14 | Finland:K-16 | France:U | Norway:15 (re-rating) | Norway:18 (original rating) | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | USA:PG | West Germany:12 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Del Rio, Texas, USA

Company:

Zanuck/Brown Productions

Trivia:

Director Trademark: [Steven Spielberg] [father]Clovis

Goofs:

Errors in geography: The "Texas" of this film is a figment of the filmmakers' imagination. The trip from just outside Houston to Sugar Land takes two days, and Sugar Land is a few miles from the Mexican border. In fact, Sugar Land is a municipality southwest of Houston, not much more than an hour from anywhere in the Houston metro area. And Houston is on the Texas Gulf Coast, two days' drive from the border.

Quotes:

Maxwell Slide: Is your name Buster Daniels?
Drunk: Well, it was before I married.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Making of '1941' (1996) (V)

Soundtrack:

I've Been Working on the Railroad

Spielberg's sleeper- a tragic-comedy that delivers what it proposes

Before Jaws propelled Steven Spielberg to the moon, he was a television director, often on episodes of Columbo and Night Gallery. Then came Duel, his taut, experimental feat of man vs. man in machines thriller that made him notable, if not bankable, in the Hollywood eye. His first theatrical release, The Sugarland Express, is to me still one of his ten best (maybe not top five, but up there). Along with his screenwriters (whom would all go to win at Cannes), Spielberg brings a true story with a sense of the tragic realism, but also the sense of adventure and fun that goes into Spielberg's most entertaining films. There's usually a sense of excitement, but one can sense this is not the kind of story that will end up as the main characters think.

Goldie Hawn (as pretty as she is dramatic and chippy) and William Atheron (later impressionable in Ghostbusters, very much so here), are a husband and wife- the husband is in jail at the start of the film, and Hawn breaks him out with little trouble. They have a custody battle, literally, going on with their son, who is away at a home. They have to go through Texas- aka the 'Sugarland Express'- but it won't be easy. Soon there's a pursuit across the state, as the couple becomes rather famous in their simple pursuit of getting the one they love. Hawn and Atherton play off each other well, and Spielberg even at his young age as a director here gets very good performances out of them, especially out of Atherton who has a kind of urgent, tense, but focused way about him throughout. Hawn here isn't totally in the kind of mode like in her vehicle comedies- she's playing the worried mother, as determined as her husband, but her performance still contains a kind of naiveté that's crucial to the character.

And in full widescreen glory Spielberg flexes his technical chops to a full capacity. He doesn't make the film as a thriller like with Duel, but it still drives suspense on in its road movie way. There are a couple of shots that are done for the first time (see trivia) to great effect, and there is a scene in a small town I still remember very well due to the amount of people that are in it, and how Spielberg directs this wonderfully. In some ways this is like one of those Lifetime movies crossed with Smokey and the Bandit only played more for realism; there's something very interesting that we don't get to see much with the son, he's always in a world of his own inside the house, as the situation builds on the outside.

This all builds up to an ending that some have said doesn't work, or (like with some of Spielberg's other films, War of the Worlds for example) is too abrupt. I found that it worked just as well as with the opening scenes. It's realistic, at least for the period, and its important to remember this is based on a true story, and in these establishing and closing scenes the audience gets the real meat of the story (Catch Me if You Can did this too, though in a different way), and then in the middle some of the more dramatized parts come in. It wasn't a smash success on its first release, but it made enough of an impression with its win at Cannes and its writers guild nomination (ironically it was nominated for Best Comedy) to get Spielberg his next gig, which ended up being the real test of his career. As a nifty tale of overly concerned parents on-the-run, its really very impressive.