The Chase (1966)

not as good as all the hype

The acting in this movie is really good.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A year before his seminal critical triumph, Bonnie & Clyde, Arthur Penn gave us The Chase. A seedy, sleepy noirish tale of a local boy who breaks out of jail & how his former neighbors deal with it. During the 60's when themes of sexual frankness & violence were slowly creeping into cinema, some films adapted marvelously while others didn't. Scenes which should be insightful & startling come off as awkward & poorly staged but ultimately this film is a curio & a must watch at least for the cast (look for a young Paul Williams as a gawking teen bystander) & the further solidification of Penn as a director w/later films as Little Big Man & Night Moves.

What starts as a simple prison break turns into an incredibly tense emotional thriller in The Chase. With an all-star cast and a perfectly eerie tone set by director Arthur Penn, you'll be kept on the edge of your seat from start to finish.Robert Redford and his cellmate break out of prison, but when his cellmate kills a man and flees the scene, everyone thinks Robert Redford is the murderer! He tries to make his way back to town to see his wife, but when the town residents get wind of his plan, they all panic. E.G. Marshall, a very important figure, is worried about his son's safety, since he's having an affair with Redford's wife, Jane Fonda. Robert Duvall, whose wife is having an affair with Richard Bradford, is worried because he knows a secret about Redford's crime. Redford's parents, Miriam Hopkins and Malcom Atterbury, feel guilty about not hiring him a lawyer before. Ken Renard knows where he is, and knows he'll get harassed because of it. And finally, Marlon Brando, the sheriff, tries in vain to keep the peace.Lillian Hellman's script, based on Horton Foote's play, is very well-written, with plenty of characters to root for and against. Marlon Brando's character is by far the most interesting and likable, and even though he isn't usually cast in peace-keeper roles, he's very convincing as he's pulled by all sides and still tries to maintain law and order. This is a pretty heavy movie, so be prepared. There's infidelity, violence, and racial harassment. But if you tend to like dramatic films from the 1960s, rather than the fluffy ones, you'll probably enjoy The Chase.

This is a really,really awful film. More of a TV movie than a big screen motion picture. I gave it four stars out of ten and I think I am being generous. Brando appeared in some really second rate movies during the sixties and this certainly is one of them. There are a brick load full of talented actors and familiar faces but there is not enough story to keep them from doing anything but cameo appearances.There was a great deal of disagreement and tension between the producer, the writer, and the director and it certainly shows . It's probably one of the worst examples of ensemble acting I have ever seen. Its just a bunch of actors reciting lines. There is no chemistry or cohesion. The ending is so bad that you will be convulsed with laughter."The Chase" makes "Robot Monster" look like "Gone with the Wind"

A frustrating element bookends this picture with the character of Mrs. Reeves (Miriam Hopkins), mother of Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford), escaped from prison and on the run from a murder he's sure to be blamed for but didn't commit following the breakout. Each time we see her she's blaming herself for the way her son turned out, and quite literally has a nervous breakdown trying to convince Sheriff Calder (Marlon Brando) to give her son a pass. Bubber himself looks at his mother with disdain when she appeals to him by insisting that he take the money from the sale of the Reeves home to pay for a good defense lawyer. I would have welcomed a fuller exposition of what was going on there with Bubber and his Mom.It always fascinates me how certain actors establish a certain mannerism and use it from picture to picture. I've never read anyone else comment on it. In this one, I'm thinking of the way Redford uses that eye squint thing of his, usually just one eye, a trait he also exhibited as the Sundance Kid and as Sonny Steele in "The Electric Horseman". Brando's got his own thing too, but I didn't see it here, that slight brush to the jaw from "The Godfather" and "The Freshman". Other actors that have repeated a technique in a similar manner include Bogart with the facial grimace and Cagney with the shoulder shrug. For me, those little nuances heighten my viewing pleasure when I'm out there trying to catch them.As far as the story goes, I'd be hard pressed to come up with another picture with so many dysfunctional characters, where husbands and wives cheat on each other right out in the open, and carouse their lives away in alcohol and debauchery. It's what gave rise to Sheriff Calder's comment about the citizens of Terrell to wife Ruby (Angie Dickinson), noted in my summary line above. I also thought it kind of odd that Calder and his wife lived in an apartment stepping through a door directly from the sheriff's office. Gee, how weird is that? But you know what, the movie has a way of grabbing the viewer with it's disparate characters leading their train wreck lives, and it makes you want to stick around to see how it all plays out. As a couple of other reviewers on this board have noted, I also made a mental comparison of Bubber's shooting at the end of the story with that of Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. It was almost too blatant, and I'd like to know what went into the decision to film the scene that way.As for Brando, I think he earned his pay here. Not only was his role performed superbly, but he also managed to take some WWE style bumps without benefit of a stand-in. Back in the Sixties that would have been the WWWF, but you know what I mean. He particularly impressed me by falling off the desk in his office after getting trashed by Lem, Damon and Archie. But even at that, and for the life of me, I can't figure out where all that blood came from.