One thing those had in common with Smokey and the Bandit is box office success.

That series began more than 20 years ago with comparable stakes to those of Smokey and the Bandit, but over time has just gotten bigger and bigger, with huge casts, international intrigue, and even (in the last one) a trip to space. But the meat-and-potatoes of Smokey and the Bandit is those car chases, which aren’t especially special effects-laden but are still outstanding.Ĭompare it to the present day’s most famous car-chase franchise, the Fast and the Furious movies. Yes, the chemistry is crackling, and the script is very funny, as is the film’s very 1970s conceit of including a theme song (Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down”) that recites the plot of the movie. Along the way, he picks up a runaway bride (a shockingly young Sally Field), and things go predictably on that front. Of course, because it wouldn’t look cool for The Bandit to drive a truck, he instead drives a Pontiac Trans Am, in order to distract the cops from where the beer is. In pursuit is a vengeful sheriff (Jackie Gleason.) Is Coors good enough beer to be worth the trouble? Probably not, but I digress.īig Enos and Little Enos (Pat McCormick and Paul Williams), wealthy race car owners, want to celebrate a big win in Atlanta - why? “because he’s thirsty, dummy” - so they hire The Bandit (Burt Reynolds) and his associate The Snowman (Jerry Reed) to take the hundreds of cases of Coors across four states. No, it’s not moonshine, and the film isn’t set during Prohibition it just turns out that it was at that team not allowed to sell Coors east of Oklahoma. The plot entails a scheme to… a plot to smuggle a truck full of Coors beer from Texas to Georgia. Part of what’s so great about Smokey and the Bandit is just how low-stakes the action is.

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