Movie Review: Convoy (1978; EMI Films/Cheezy Flicks)

...it's sometimes intriguing, and at the same time, perplexing when a renowned, albeit controversial filmmaker...reputedly known for escapist film fare, rendered on a provocatively visceral and dead serious level...does a 180 degree turnabout, and takes on a much more lighter level of material...adventurous and thrilling, with a measure of humor, intrigue, romanticism and rollicking light-heartiness, that wholly contradicts many of that filmmaker's previous productions. Almost as if the director wanted to take it easy, and do something fun and outrageous...maybe even commercial, for a change...a break from the provocative and controversial, and onto something much more akin to wild and crazy abandon. They...the critics, his fellow filmmaking brethren, and even the general public...thought that director Sam Peckinpah had taken leave of his senses, when his next chosen project was a rip-roaring, 18-wheelin' juggernaut, good ol' boy movie version of a pop country/western hit song, which at the time, was reining over the AM radio waves. Crazy insane?? This is the guy who dared turn the western genre on it's ear, with unconventional revisionist classics, like 1969's "The Wild Bunch" & 1973's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", not to mention visceral crime dramas, like 1971's "Straw Dogs" & "1972's "The Getaway"; yet, here he was...jumping on the band wagon, with the 'flavor-of-the-moment', dash & crash truckspoitation genre, spear-headed by at-the-time recent runaway hits, like 1977's "Smokey and the Bandit", "Breaker! Breaker!" and the following year's "High-Ballin'". And amazingly enough, Peckinpah's whimsically relishable adaption of singer/songwriter C.W. McCall's hit song, "Convoy", proved to be his biggest box-office hit, considering his reputation...and given some able-bodied assistance from another Hollywood legend, due to director's ailing health...