01
Badlands
Why this pick
Like Spielberg’s debut, it turns a fugitive couple into an oddly intimate road odyssey, balancing deadpan humour, open-road momentum and an increasingly uneasy view of American innocence.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1974 1h 50m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
The Sugarland Express
CrimeDrama
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved The Sugarland Express, try these.
01
02
The Getaway
Why this pick
A lean, sun-baked lovers-on-the-run thriller with the same pleasure in improvised escapes, mounting police pressure and a couple whose bond must survive the chase.
03
The Chase
Why this pick
Its escaped-convict premise becomes a tense, compassionate study of pursuit and small-town hostility, sharing Sugarland’s sympathy for people trapped by institutions and public spectacle.
04
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Why this pick
Goldie Hawn’s fierce, comic vulnerability finds a close cousin in this 1970s woman-on-the-road drama, with messy detours, vivid Americana and a determined parent at its centre.
05
Running on Empty
Why this pick
It shares the humane perspective behind the chase: life as a family fugitive story, where tenderness, ordinary routines and parental love matter as much as suspense.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
In May 1969, Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) visits her husband Clovis Michael Poplin (William Atherton) to tell him that their son will soon be placed in the care of foster parents. Even though he is four months away from release from the Beauford H. Jester Prison Farm, she convinces him to escape to assist her in retrieving her child. They hitch a ride from the prison with an elderly couple, but when Texas Department of Public Safety Patrolman Maxwell Slide (Michael Sacks) stops the car, they take the car and run.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Ben Johnson
Captain Harlin Tanner
Louise Latham
Mrs. Looby
Bill Thurman
Hunter
Goldie Hawn
Lou Jean Poplin
Michael Sacks
Patrolman Maxwell Slide
William Atherton
Clovis Michael Poplin
Gregory Walcott
Patrolman Ernie Mashburn
Steve Kanaly
Patrolman Jessup