Sam Peckinpah directs Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw and Ben Johnson in this crime action thriller where a couple go on a run for the border after a heist goes wrong.

Steve McQueen. Funeral black suit. Shotgun wrapped in a blanket. Dragging a scuffed and exhausted Ali McGraw in his wake. The epitome of cool. There’s at least five awesome hardcore crime set pieces spread all over this. The heist. The train station con. The garbage truck. The violence in the hotel (No Country For Old Men knows this section verbatim.) The race to the border. Yet the most thrilling sequence is the credit sequence; edited like a mini Nicolas Roeg flick, we experience Doc’s final straw as prison breaks him over a series of intercut repetitions. A hectoring score by Quincy Jones, a screenplay by Walter Hill based on a Jim Thompson novel… so you know we’ve got the hardboiled goods. Al Lettieri stands out as Rudy, the main antagonist. A personal all-time favourite. Every movie should be like this.

10

Perfect Double Bill: No Country For Old Men (2007)

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/