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Absolutely Fantastic

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

"The California Kid" is the 200th installment of "The ABC Movie of the Week" and as such you would have thought that they would have shown one of their very best movies. Instead, it was a film with a few exciting moments...and a lot of padding. In essence, the film could have been condensed to half an hour!The story begins with Michael McCord (Martin Sheen) going through a crappy little town near the state line. The cops here lie in wait and the town is just a gigantic speed trap. But with one cop (Vic Morrow) it's more. He LIKES it when a speeder tries to outrun him and cross the state line...as he gives chase and runs them off the road to their death. He gets off on doing this. But despite ticketing McCord, McCord doesn't even try going full bore towards the state line...until the sadistic cop kills once again.This DOES sound exciting, doesn't it. Well, it isn't. The pace is the problem...it's just too slow, too padded and never really delivers.

I decided to rent this movie because of its interesting cast and also because the 1970s was the golden age of the made for TV movie. But as the end credits started to roll, I felt kind of let down by what I had just seen. Don't get me wrong - this isn't a terrible or merely bad movie. Vic Morrow is good as the villain, and what's really interesting is that the script doesn't make his character a COMPLETE creep - we learn he has a trauma in his past. And Martin Sheen does well as a laid back protagonist. In fact, pretty much the entire movie is very laid back, and that's the problem. There is no grit, no feeling of tension, and what happens in the climax is telegraphed so early on that there is no surprise when it actually happens. There's also very little action during the entire 74 minute running length to liven things up. More often than not this car movie seems to be just spinning its wheels. I've seen worse, but the movie lacks enough spark to be a real grabber.

1958. The sleepy small Southern town of Clarksburg. Evil Sheriff Roy Childress (the almighty Vic Morrow in peak nasty form) cracks down super hard on speeders by forcing said offenders off a cliff to their untimely deaths on an especially dangerous stretch of road. Childress meets his match when cool young hot rod driver Michael McCord (a splendidly smooth and brooding portrayal by Martin Sheen) shows up in town in his souped-up automobile with the specific intention of avenging the death of his brother (Sheen's real-life sibling Joe Estevez in a brief cameo). Director Richard T. Heffron, working from a taut and intriguing script by Richard Compton (the same guy who directed the 70's drive-in movie gems "Welcome Home, Soldier Boys" and "Macon County Line"), relates the gripping story at a brisk pace, neatly creates a flavorsome 50's period setting, and ably milks plenty of suspense out the tense game of wit and wills between Childress and McCord. The uniformly fine cast helps a lot: Sheen radiates a brash James Deanesque rebellious vibe in the lead, Morrow makes the most out of his meaty bad guy part, plus there are excellent supporting performances by Michelle Phillips as sweet diner waitress Maggie, Stuart Margolin as a folksy deputy, Nick Nolte as amiable gas station attendant Buzz Stafford, Gary Morgan as Buzz's endearingly gawky younger brother Lyle, Janit Baldwin as sassy local tart Sissy, Britt Leach as stingy cab driver Johnny, and Frederic Downs as the stern Judge J.A. Hooker. The climactic vehicular confrontation between Childress and McCord is a real pulse-pounding white-knuckle thrilling doozy. Terry K. Meade's sharp cinematography, the well-drawn characters (for example, Childress became obsessed with busting speeders after his wife and kid were killed in a fatal hit and run incident), the groovy, syncopated score by Luchi De Jesus, and the beautiful mountainside scenery all further enhance the overall sound quality of this superior made-for-TV winner.

In 1958, Clarksberg was a famous speed trap town. Much revenue was generated by the Sheriff's Department catching speeders. The ones who tried to outrun the Sheriff? Well, that gave the Sheriff a chance to push them off the Clarksberg Curve with his Plymouth cruiser. For example, in the beginning of the movie, a couple of servicemen on leave trying to get back to base on time are pushed off to their deaths, if I recall correctly. Then one day, a stranger drove into town. Possibly the coolest hot rodder in the world. Michael McCord. Even his name is a car name, as in McCord gaskets. In possibly the ultimate hot rod. A black flamed '34 Ford coupe. The colors of death, evil and hellfire. He gets picked up for speeding by the Sheriff on purpose. He checks out the lay of the land. He is the brother of one of the Sheriff's victims. He knows how his brother died. The Clarksberg government is all in favor of the Sheriff. There's only one way to get justice served for the killing of his brother and to fix things so "this ain't a-ever gonna happen again to anyone": recreate the chase and settle the contest hot-rodder style to the death. He goes out to the Curve and practices. The Sheriff knows McCord knows. The race begins... This is a movie to be remembered by anyone who ever tried to master maneuvering on a certain stretch of road.