The Sugarland Express 4K Review

[Barry]

 The Sugarland Express  4K Review
 
The Sugarland Express was the first theatrical movie directed by Steven Spielberg and released in  1974.  Spielberg had directed Tv projects including “The Night Gallery,” “Columbo,” and the TV movie “Duel.” This movie was also his first teaming with music composer, John Williams. 
 
Goldie Hawn plays a woman recently released from prison. When in prison Goldie and her husband had to give up their two year old child and he was placed in foster care. She wants the child back, so she arranges for her husband to break out of his prison.  They kidnap a State Trooper, at gunpoint,  and his patrol car and have him drive all the way to Sugarland to claim her child.  The “express” come from the more than thirty cars trailing them.
 
This is not quite a good movie.  30 cars chasing them?  They have pointed a gun at a police officer and the police don’t retaliate with guns when they can? Sadly, the BIG thing is that the characters are NOT developed well, or much, at all. Goldie plays a more or less serious role and adds some humor to it, but there is not enough feeling or reality to mzke it interesting or compelling.  The police are chasing them for 90 minutes and you could have cut half that time out because there is no character study here.
 
As if he was still directing the TV movie of “Duel” there is more shown of the police cars, chasing, crashing, falling, colliding than of the people.  And then it hit me: The direction, photography, editing was more like an inexpensive 1970s TV movie than a theatrical one. It had all car chases that 1970s detective shows had.
 
Video:  This a restored film. On a 1 to 10 scale of what we get today, this is a 7 or 8. Like I wrote, it looks like a TV movie, a bit grainy, occasionally dark, but very sharp. They dd a good job on restoring it.  It is widescreen.
 
Audio:  They took the original 3 channel tracks (two for music, one for dialogue) and produced a very good 5.1 DTS channel. However, there isn’t much here, but the sound effects are fine.
 
I did enjoy the 15 minute bonus on how they restored this and other films at Universal. I don’t think I will be watching this movie again, but it was interesting to see how Spielberg started.  His next movie would be Jaws!!!!