There was no bigger icon to a young boy growing up in the South in the 1970s than Burt Reynolds.  It’s just a fact.  Sure, you could catch an old movie on TV with Steve McQueen or James Dean and see that they were badasses also, but they were dead.  I’m talking a living, breathing example of a Southern boy who done good.

That’s what Burt Reynolds was to me, to most of my friends growing up, and to many of the friends I made years later in college.  For me, it was seeing Gator at the drive-in with my parents.  Reynolds as the southern outlaw, operating just outside the system but only because justice and fairness weren’t accessible otherwise, was my hero.  Later films like Smokey and The Bandit and Semi-Tough cemented my admiration, as did my finally watching White Lightning (the movie that spawned Gator) and The Longest Yard. 

The thing is, it wasn’t just that he was a southern boy who became an actor.  He was the quintessential southern boy actor.  He played football for Florida State and almost went pro (to the Baltimore Colts) but a knee injury pushed him out of football and onto the stage.  He shot some of his movies on location in Florida (which was HUGE to me and my friends as kids).  He was the southern boy who made it big and didn’t forget where he came from.  He was willing to bring Hollywood to Florida when no one else would and he even continued to help the community locally (establishing an acting school and theater).

The Bandit may be his classic role, but no Burt Reynolds movie influenced me more, than Hooper.  Hooper, a movie shot entirely in Hollywood, changed the way I looked at the movie industry and made me want to do one thing for a living.  I wanted to be a stuntman.  Well, at least until I was 15 and then, I wanted to be in a rock band, but that’s another story. 

Hooper was the movie that spawned the construction of a seven-foot tall ramp that allowed my friends and I to jump our bikes off the end of a cement culvert, drop vertically 14 feet and land in five feet of water.  Hooper influenced us to try jumping my two-seater go-kart off a dirt mound, ending with a cracked frame and my friend Wendell’s broken tailbone.  Hooper got me to jump off my friend Dodd’s roof and onto his trampoline, ending in my own sprained knee.  Hooper completely rocked and if not for Florida’s strict ban on fireworks, we’d have done much, much worse.

Reynolds plays Sonny Hooper, a stuntman that is pushing the limits of his abilities as a human being.  He’s the best in the business, legendary among his peers, but he’s old.  He hasn’t treated his body well and his lifestyle is taking its toll.  Still, he’s successful, he’s got a beautiful wife (the extraordinarily fantasy-inducing Sally Fields) and he’s got the respect of his peers (notably Brian Keith and James Best). 

Enter Director Roger Deal (Robert Klein), whose new blockbuster spy flick is chock full of death defying stunts and Ski Chinski (Jan Michael Vincent), an up and coming stuntman who idolizes Hooper.  Deal wants his movie to be the ultimate in special effects and Chinski wants wants to be the one to pick up the torch from Hooper and take things to the next level.  The only problem is, Hooper isn’t quite ready to hang up the towel.

Hooper succeeds because of two things; Reynolds’ charm and the atmosphere of balls-out fun the cast gives off.  The former is something that Reynolds just can’t help but exude.  The latter comes because of Hal Needham.

Needham (a stunt coordinator turned director) and Reynolds go way, way, way back.  The two had just found massive success with Smokey And The Bandit (a runaway $100 million box-office bonanza in 1977 that was based on a story Needham wrote himself).  Needham worked with Reynolds as an A.D. on White Lightning, Gator and The Longest Yard so the two were old friends.   It was an actor/director relationship built on mutual admiration and a love of fun that would continue through the Smokey And The Bandit sequels, The Cannonball Run movies and Stroker Ace.

The success of Smokey And The Bandit ensured these two could do whatever they wanted for a follow-up and what they did was make the ultimate stuntman movie.  This is one of those films where you just know the “behind the scenes featurette” would have been fucking phenomenal. 

The thing is, Hooper tends to be forgotten in Reynolds filmography and I think the reason why is because aside from Deliverance and The Longest Yard, it may be the most “guy-oriented” film in Reynolds’ career.  What love story is here consists of Fields worrying about her man.  The rest is about men being men, living life on a weird, twisted edge fueled by Coors, adrenaline and pills and always looking for the next explosion, motorcycle jump or freefall.

Ultimately, the fact that it’s a guy film that’s completely unapologetic is why I love this film. 

Well, that and they blow shit up. 

Lots of shit.

Presentation
The presentation on the current Hooper disc completely sucks as does the packaging.  Currently, we’re talking cardboard snap-pack and under $5.00 in the Wal-Mart bin-of-losers.  However, Hooper is worth much more than that.  You should seriously pick it up.  As for the viewing experience, the look of the movie is grainy and the sound is adequate at best.  Seriously, someone needs to step up and reexamine this man’s work.  I’m talking Criterion Collection Hooper, bitches!  You know Reynolds would do a commentary and Needham would probably gladly do one too. 

Somebody, get on this before Needham (who’s 75 now) kicks it.

Extras
You get nada, zilch, zip.

The Bottom Line
Hooper is a forgotten film that is a hell of a lot of fun to watch.  Grab a six-pack of your favorite beer, order some wings and watch the kind of movie that nobody makes anymore.  A movie where all the stunts are real, the explosions aren’t CGI and the studio didn’t meddle.  You’ll love it.