
While driving through the Arizona desert, Albuquerque based independent trucker Martin Penwald - who goes by the handle "Rubber Duck" - along with his fellow truckers "Pig Pen" and "Spider Mike", are entrapped by unscrupulous Sheriff Lyle "Cottonmouth" Wallace using a key tool of the trucker's trade, the citizens' band (CB) radio. Rubber Duck and Cottonmouth have a long, antagonistic history. When this encounter later escalates into a more physical one as Cottonmouth threaten... (Full plot summary below)
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While driving through the Arizona desert, Albuquerque based independent trucker Martin Penwald - who goes by the handle "Rubber Duck" - along with his fellow truckers "Pig Pen" and "Spider Mike", are entrapped by unscrupulous Sheriff Lyle "Cottonmouth" Wallace using a key tool of the trucker's trade, the citizens' band (CB) radio. Rubber Duck and Cottonmouth have a long, antagonistic history. When this encounter later escalates into a more physical one as Cottonmouth threatens Spider Mike, a man who just wants to get home to his pregnant wife, Rubber Duck and other the truckers involved, including Spider Mike, Pig Pen and "Widow Woman", go on the run, figuring the best thing to do being to head to New Mexico to avoid prosecution. Along for the ride is Melissa, a beautiful photographer who just wanted a ride to the airport. As news of what happened spreads over the CB airwaves, other truckers join their convoy as a show of support. Cottonmouth rallies other law enforcement officers throughout the southwest, they who soon learn that stopping Rubber Duck, the face of the now highly public standoff, is not as easy as shooting him and the truck due to his highly explosive cargo. As the standoff escalates, New Mexico Governor Jerry Haskins joins the fray, he who sees the strong public support for the truckers being something on which he can capitalize politically.
Leave your thoughts about Convoy.
| The DissolveNathan RabinConvoy has one huge advantage over the song that inspired it: It’s one thing to hear about a mighty convoy, but it’s quite another to see it. There’s a certain tacky, truck-stop grandeur to witnessing so many huge vehicles traveling together like a pack of steel, gasoline-fueled animals. |
| The New YorkerPauline KaelAt its best, the film finds Peckinpah moving into a new poetry of non-violence, of movement associated with explicit, actualized harmony, but the director doesn’t trust himself, mistaking change of form for impersonal commercial stewardship. |
| Chicago ReaderDave KehrIt looks like a potboiler: only a few of Peckinpah's themes are present, and they're mostly left undeveloped. But Peckinpah can still stage a fight scene better than anyone, and the film establishes its own crazy rhythm as it runs off wildly through most of the southwest. |
| EmpireKim NewmanA noisy but enjoyable destruction derby of a film, sadly with none of the subtlety, invention or skill of Spielberg's Duel. |
| Washington PostGary ArnoldThe movie is a big, costly, phony exercise in myth‐making, machismo, romance-of-the-open-road nonsense and incredible self‐indulgence. |
| NewsweekDavid AnsenKristofferson's performance is as monotone as his singing, showing few changes in dramatic emphasis. Unmotivated story riddled with confusion and disarray. |