an odd movie to say the least

First off, it's based off a hit novelty song which itself didn't even really have much of a plot. That's strike one towards making a coherant good movie.

I grew up watching this taped off TV in the mid '80s. Even as a kid I knew there was something off about Convoy. It cant decide if it's a comedy or an action movie or a drama or a political message-film. It tries to be all of them at once and ends up just being confusing. I recently watched a documentary about the making of this movie and both Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw point fingers at the chaotic production. The shoot went way over time and way over budget and was almost shut down by EMI a couple times before they decided to try and make their investment back. Late director Sam Peckinpah was drugged out and drunk for parts of the filming leaving James Coburn to pick up his slack. Ali MacGraw wanted to run away from it several times out of sheer frustration and her poorly defined role and they asked her to re-shoot all her close up scenes in a couple days after months of work.

The final product was over 3 hours long which had to be edited down to an hour and 50 minutes. Thus why large parts of Convoy seem incomplete or confusing.
I'd love to see the original directors cut but sadly that will most likely never happen because I'm guessing that extra hour of footage was tossed in the trash in the EMI editing rooms before release.

There are some things about Convoy that I've always liked a lot. Peckinpah did a great job making the movie feel "epic" and big, like a modern day western only with truckers instead of cowboys and trucks instead of horses riding over the horizon in the sunset. He made the trucks themselves, which most people don't think much of while passing on the highway, seem larger than life and unstoppable espeically Rubber Duck's black Mack. The ending of the film with Duck sacrificing himself Jesus-like face to face with almost certain death at the hands of the Texas National Guard was pretty dramatic and well done.
And the end credit roll with major scenes running backwards behind the theme song was clever and made what you just watched seem (again) epic and important.

I'm still waiting for a good American release of this on Bluray/DVD without the horrible picture quality of the somewhat recent Cheesy-flicks release. In their defense they claim that was the best they could do with what they were given.

10-4 good buddy!