GATOR

US, 1976, 116 minutes, Colour.
Burt Reynolds, Jack Weston, Lauren Hutton, Jerry Reed, Alice Ghostley.
Directed by Burt Reynolds.

Burt Reynolds has developed a strongly genial screen personality. It is proved by this film in which he directs himself. And while, like Clint Eastwood, he is the tough hero, involved in typical American violence, he gives his film a warm and, at times, sentimental touch. We've seen the Gator material often before (and the film is a sequel to White Lightning), but it is appealingly offered with Lauren Hutton as heroine and the comic support of Jack Weston and a daffy Alice Ghostly. Jerry Reed is villain. While it has a background of comment on contemporary U.S. law and order enforcement, Gator is mainly an undemanding night out.

1. The quality of this action drama? Entertainment and social purposes? The audience at which it was aimed?

2. The importance of southern locations, colour, background music? A Burt Reynolds film for acting and directing? His style and personality? Sentiment and humour as well as toughness?

3. The film as an example of Americana of the seventies: social corruption, politics, rackets. violence. the role of the media, the media and exposure of corruption. crusades and heroes? How much did it reflect the seventies? American values of the time?

4. The presentation of the mayor, his motives, political campaigning, using people for his own purposes?

5. The contrast with Greenfield? An engaging character, earnest, his strengths and his weaknesses. his fatness? His dedication to his job. the pursuit. of Gator, of Bama? His losing, his contact? The dangers that he underwent, his being bashed, the rendezvous which led to his death? How was he presented as a kind of hero?

6. Emmaline and the eccentric woman who contributes to justice, leads a crusade? Her giving out of leaflets, helping Gator, her death?

7. Gator as the centre of the film? His name, his background, a hero in the South, his involvement with moonshine and its way of life, the prison background, the presuppositions of the film, White Lightning, his relationship to his family, father and daughter? A conventional American hero, anti-hero?

8. The presentation of his skill, especially with the speedboat chase and its melodrama? How successfully filmed, exciting, humorous? The effect on Greenfield?

9. Interest in the plot to catch Bama, framing of Gator, informing, his applying for a job, ingratiating himself with his friend Bama, the importance of the tour of the rackets, his work for Bama and the effect on him? The audience entering this picture of corruption via Gator?

1O. How attractive a personality was Aggie? Her TV ambitions and achievement? The reason for combining with Gator, motivation for helping him, sharing the dangers, the raid? Falling in love with him? The significance of their parting at the end? Her desire for a career? Was she a credible and attractive career woman?

11. How accurate a picture of a gangster was Bama? The type of person that he was, his influence on the mayor, his henchmen, the rackets that he ran, the prostitution he indulged in, the ugliness of his violence? As a picturing of evil? What do ordinary people have to do to administer justice on this kind of man? The evil personified in his henchmen and their brutality, especially to Greenfield?

12. The effect of fear on people, leading to violence. and the administration of personal justice? The vigilante approach?

13. The contrast with the violence in the lyrical romantic passages, especially with Aggie and Gator by the seaside? The contrast with the violence in the fire of the house and the deaths of Emmaline and Greenfield?

14.How sharp was the social observation of America in the seventies? Society and individuals within society? The role of the media and its influence? The administration of justice, and where there is corruption, the inevitable violence?