When I was a kid everyone was talkin’ about truckin’. You couldn’t go anywhere without someone quipping "10-4 good buddy" whenever you asked them to stop bleeding on you. Nor could you go anywhere without someone singing that bloody song by C. W. McCall, Convoy. That song was actually the inspiration for this film and a song is usually anywhere between two and a half to five minutes, while a story that short demands a smaller plot… so just try stretching that into a weak 106-minute film. That’s right, we gonna need to pad it out…

I recommend listening to the song. That way you’ll get a nice, neat and more importantly concise version of this very silly, very empty film. Except for the fact that Convoy resembles the song in about name only. What appears here is Kris Kristofferson plays the 'Rubber Duck' (a name that means something totally different in this topsy-turvy 21st century) who stands up to a crooked cop in a slow-motion diner brawl and, before you know it, a convoy of trucks has come up behind him as he makes his break for the State border.

It’s fairly weak. There’s bugger all plot and there’s Ali McGraw as the love interest who should have known better than to appear in this. It’s little more than a collection of themes of the time, personified in an anti-highway code protest. The acting is okay, but the plot leaks like a ruptured sewer truck (and smells as bad). The obligatory brawl scene in a diner is pissy, there’s so much CB slang as to get anyone into it all moist and there’s plenty of trucks driving real fast.

(You can’t see me, but right now I’m pulling my arm vertically down a couple of times like an excitable kid in the universal signal to truck-drivers to blow their air horn).

Wooooooo!

A fairly decent transfer for this 1978 film sees limited artefacts about in the full cinema aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with anamorphic CB radios. The picture quality is a little soft for the majority of the picture, but still quite watchable if you’re into your truckin’ and movies. Shadow detail isn’t too bad, with blacks being natural, but a good share of grain at times in the night shots. Otherwise a budget transfer for a budget release of a budget film.

Naturally this is a Dolby Digital stereo offering with plenty of decent noises being balanced evenly throughout. Dialogue is spattered liberally with colloquial CB slang that may find anyone unfamiliar scratching their noodle and uttering "huh?". Music is lamentably country flavoured to suit the original theme and is written by Chip Davis and Bill Fries. The same criminals responsible for the original song (Bill Fries is C.W. McCall’s real name). Sound effects are a little bit borrowed from the Stock SFX Library of Utah. Synching is a little out at times too, which is irritating and cheapens the budget transfer considerably.

As to extras, these are still on the long haul and ain’t due back for a couple more days yet.

Convoy is a fad film, pure and simple. While it has a sense of fun, it does try to bring in some deeper issues that don’t quite fit that fun sense, leaving the film a little in limbo. Ernest Borgnine puts in a dramatic performance as Dirty Lyle, the corrupt sheriff who learns a valuable lesson about truckers from truckers. He’s actually the only one doing any real acting here. Everyone else is just along for the ride. (Geddit?)