
Used car salesman Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell) needs money to run for State Senate, so he approaches his boss Luke (Jack Warden). Luke agrees to front him the $10,000 he needs, but then encounters an "accident" orchestrated by his brother Roy also played by Warden, who runs the car lot across the street. Roy is hoping to claim title to his brother's property because Roy's paying off the mayor to put the new interstate through the area. After Luke disappears, it's all out war bet... (Full plot summary below)
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Used car salesman Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell) needs money to run for State Senate, so he approaches his boss Luke (Jack Warden). Luke agrees to front him the $10,000 he needs, but then encounters an "accident" orchestrated by his brother Roy also played by Warden, who runs the car lot across the street. Roy is hoping to claim title to his brother's property because Roy's paying off the mayor to put the new interstate through the area. After Luke disappears, it's all out war between the competing car shops, and no nasty trick is off limits as Rudy and his gang fight to keep Roy from taking Luke's property. Then Luke's daughter shows up.
Leave your thoughts about Used Cars.
| The A.V. ClubScott TobiasSavagely funny...taken as a rancid, festering slice of Americana, it seems more potent than ever. |
| Film Freak CentralBill Chambers...Makes us wish that Robert Zemeckis had directed every T&A comedy [of the 1980s] |
| Chicago ReaderDave KehrFor once a comedy in the Animal House school that knows what it's was about: the vulgarity of the gags matches the vulgarity of the subject, and this 1980 film becomes a fierce, cathartically funny celebration of the low, the cheap, the venal—in short, America. Most of the time, I didn't know whether to laugh or shudder, and I ended up doing a lot of both. It was Steve Martin who said, “Comedy isn't pretty,” but it's Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, the writer-directors here, who prove it; this is the Dawn of the Dead of slapstick. |
| Ozus' World Movie ReviewsDennis SchwartzIt has some raunchy fun pillaging used car salesmen as untrustworthy. |
| New York TimesVincent CanbyA foul-mouthed, bumpercrunching farce that is often funnier in theory than in fact but, even so, is a movie that has more laughs in it than any film of the summer except Airplane! |
| CinePassionFernando F. CroceSixties nostalgia from I Wanna Hold Your Hand shifts to bracing vulgarity circa late-'70s, just as Kurt Russell graduates from Disney to conman greasiness. |
| Washington PostGary ArnoldDirector/co-writer Robert Zemeckis has undeniable energy and flair, but it's being misspent on pretexts and situations that seem inexcusably gratuitous and snide. |
| CinemaniaDan JardineThe film's incessant assault on its characters and their perverse quest for the American Holy Grail (money and power) has the pacing and energy of a 1930's zany screwball comedy, but is much darker in spirit |
| New YorkerPauline KaelA foul-mouthed, bumpercrunching farce that is often funnier in theory than in fact but, even so, is a movie that has more laughs in it than any film of the summer except "Airplane!" It wipes out "The Blues Brothers," "Caddyshack," "Up the Academy," "Where the Buffalo Roam" and just about every other recent comedy aimed, I assume, at an otherwise television-hooked public. |
| Christian Science MonitorDavid SterrittUsed Cars is full of used characters, used ideas, and used jokes, many of which are in astonishingly bad taste. |