Film 002 - The Cannonball Run

(1981, colour, 95 mins)

Director: Hal Neeham

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Jackie Chan, Farrah Fawcett, Dom DeLuise

I don't really know why I decided to watch this, but I saw it lying around among my dad's DVDs and remembered I loved the Smokey And The Bandit films when I was younger. Since this has the same director and the same sort of action, and cosidering I love the'70s and '80s I thought I'd give it a bash.

It’s strange how some old films are just as enjoyable today as they were when they were first released, whereas others just feel completely out-of-date now. So for every 70s and 80s classic like Full Metal Jacket or The Exorcist that still continues to attract new followers and fans every day, there are others that simply don’t have the impact they did back when they were first released.

One such film is The Cannonball Run. In the early ‘80s it was a great success, with a huge cast of celebrities and loads of inside jokes, but today many of the references would fly over people’s heads and some of the celebrities wouldn’t be recognised.

That’s not to say it’s not still a good film, however. The Cannonball Run is a comedy based on a series of real-life illegal road races that saw people competing to get from one side of America to the other in the quickest time possible. The film follows a number of individuals entering the Cannonball in a race to get to California and win a huge cash prize. Think the Gumball 3000 rally crossed with Wacky Races and you’ve got a rough idea.

The setting is basically an excuse to stick loads of actors in loads of different cars and give them a daft gimmick to both add to the wackiness and make it trickier to guess who’ll win. Each team of characters have their own gimmick that they’re using to try to get to the finish line without too much hassle. You’ve got Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise in a stolen ambulance (so they can drive through towns with the siren on and not get stopped by the cops), to Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr as fake priests (after all, which policeman would book a priest?), to Roger Moore as a Jewish man who pretends he’s Roger Moore, the film’s nothing short of daft. There’s even a young Jackie Chan in his first American movie, as a Japanese (for some reason) competitor with a supercar loaded with hi-tech gizmos.

Although many of the jokes are a bit out-of-date now, there are still some fun stunts and car chases (and it’s all real, none of that CGI rubbish), and despite the awful soundtrack and the gaping huge plothole at the end of the film*, it’s still worth a watch if you have an appreciation for late ‘70s / early ‘80s chase films like Smokey And The Bandit.

3 out of 5

Movie Clip:
While waiting for a bridge to open, the Cannonballers get into a fight with a gang of bikers.