CANNONBALL 1976
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HOT on the heels of his uber-successful TV series Kung Fu, David Carradine slipped on his best pair of moccasins to play Coy ‘Cannonball’ Buckman in Cannonball. Buckman is a professional racing car driver looking to get back on the circuit after a heavy fall from grace. He is not long out of prison and itching to claim the $100K kitty on offer for the winner of the Trans-america Grand Prix, an illegal road race from Los Angeles to New York.
His sleazy older brother Bennie (Miller) locks down a 1970 Trans Am for the event and sets about organising a number of dodgy deals and often-deadly foul play to ensure Cannonball comes out on top, all in an attempt to line his own pockets.
But Bennie doesn’t count on wildcard entrant and Cannonball’s arch-enemy, Cade Redman (Mckinney) in his menacing ’68 Dodge Charger, to have an agenda of his own, and it’s soon apparent that Bennie has also underestimated the remaining motley but determined racers who are all keen to claim that first-prize booty.
Cannonball is joined by his girlfriend-cum-parole officer, Linda (a breakout role for the smokin’ hot Veronica Hamel, best remembered as Joyce Davenport in Hill Street Blues), who reluctantly rides shotgun but turns a blind eye to her career responsibilities once Cannonball’s life is threatened.
The pair is aided by Cannonball’s best friend and mechanic, Zippo (Hahn), who fronts up in a matching Trans Am to run as a decoy in the hope of giving his mate a fighting chance.
Cannonball was Carradine’s second collaboration with director Paul Bartel, following on from their cultclassic Death Race 2000 in 1975, but this time ’round they planned for a light-hearted version of the road-race concept. It was pegged as an action/comedy/drama, but actually the ‘comedy’ element is pretty much nonexistent here. The dark slant Bartel brought to Death
Race must have been hard to shake, as the film climaxes with a fiery freeway pile-up that is pretty grisly to watch and feels like a totally unnecessary inclusion.
VERDICT: 2/5