burt reynolds smokey and the bandit fmovie

He glided through his movies on a sheen of lightly buttered mockery, and his refusal to take himself seriously became the basis of his superstardom. Reynolds, however, had no visible angst, no demons. Most of the actors of his era - Nicholson, Pacino, De Niro - were all about what volatile Method artists they could be, wearing their raging insides on the outside.

The look on his face when he fired that shot said, “I’m someone you don’t want to mess with.”īut there was another side to Burt Reynolds that was just as central to his stardom. The moment when he saves his comrades from a couple of hillbilly rapists by firing an arrow from a recurve bow is the moment that made him a star. As Lewis Medlock, the toughest of a group of over-civilized city men who canoe down a river in redneck Georgia, Reynolds was implacably dangerous in a grippingly life-size way. At the movies, it was an era of road-race action flicks and vicious revenge thrillers and kung fu, and it’s no accident that Burt Reynolds came to big-screen prominence in “ Deliverance” (1972), a movie that was all about showcasing how well he knew how to fight. The ’70s are now thought of as such a sleazy cheesy mellow decade that it’s worth recalling how much good old powder-keg macho was still embedded in it.

Burt reynolds smokey and the bandit fmovie