Make the Case: 7 Best Burt Reynolds Performances (That Aren’t Smokey and the Bandit)

Or The Cannonball Run. This month at Make the Case I’m going back to the old format for a moment to highlight one of the all-time great movie stars. But we’re going to do that by avoiding at the outset the two movies he’s arguably the most well-known for. People seem to forget he was an Oscar nominee for Boogie Nights, and that’s a shame. At one time, Burt Reynolds was largely remembered as one of the most depressing living examples of what happens when you’re not considered successful anymore. His career didn’t stop, even as the overall quality of the productions he appeared in dipped lower and lower.

Without meaning to (I’ve been clearing out my Tubi watchlist), I wound up watching several of his least-remembered and least-liked efforts from the 80s and 90s. Most of those movies won’t be mentioned here, but even wildly uneven movies like Striptease and Physical Evidence point to an actor who was far more interesting than he often got credit for. Ranging between genuinely good and sincerely fascinating, there’s a lot of surprises for someone willing to sift through a body of work that’s rarely given a larger look.

That’s what I’m hoping to accomplish this month with this ranking of 7 Burt Reynolds performances I think portray a deeper actor, or at least a more interesting one, than you might suspect. There’s more than just a singularly charismatic leading man here.

 

7. Hard Time (1998)

Director: Burt Reynolds

Everyone gets a little clout when they win an Oscar, or at least get nominated for one as Reynolds had with Boogie Nights, and Hard Time, which is not a movie about The Big Bossman, was seemingly what he chose to do with it. A trilogy of movies about a hard-nosed cop who finds himself in various complicated situations, with Reynolds bringing his wildly uneven directing experience to the first film.

And you know what? It’s actually a pretty fun little B-movie. It certainly helps to be a fan of Reynolds, but the story and direction are solid, keeping in mind again the kind of film you’re watching here. It’s consistent in better-than-you’d-expect performances, particularly from Charles Durning and Mia Sara. It’s nice to see Roddy Piper and Billy Dee Williams in this movie for no particularly important reason.

It helps that Hard Time, whose sequels are more or less worth a watch if you enjoy this one, doesn’t take itself too seriously. Reynolds comes off better here than he would in most of the movies he did from 1998 on.

 

6. Heat (1986)

Directors: Dick Richards and Jerry Jameson

This might be the worst-reviewed film on the ranking, but Heat is an odd little obscurity about a bodyguard who reluctantly goes after Las Vegas gangsters after one of them beats and assaults his prostitute friend (Karen Young, who gets saddled with some long, out-of-place monologues), is weirdly likable.

Maybe, it’s the opening scene with Reynolds’ character making money by letting nerdy guys beat him up in bars. Maybe, it’s Peter MacNicol as a rich kid who pays Reynolds to teach him tough guy lessons (yes, really, and it becomes a surprisingly sweet friendship). It could be the shockingly effective scene in which Reynolds is revealed to be nothing more than a loser who refuses to leave the city that’s killing him. Heat has nightmarish tonal and pacing issues, and yet it somehow works.

I have to be very clear that Heat is not a great movie, but I found myself getting into its odd choices and character relationships, particularly the one between Reynolds and MacNicol. Heat also features one of the worst/best fight scenes ever in a Burt Reynolds film. I shouldn’t like this as much as I do, yet here we are.

 

5. Gator (1976)

Director: Burt Reynolds

It’s possible that Sterling Archer is right, and Gator really is the greatest movie of all time. I’m kidding, because as it turns out, Gator is not a particularly good movie. The first movie Burt Reynolds would direct (there’s a few more, and almost all of them are awful), Gator is a rare example of a movie that I might refer to as “So bad, it’s good.” I don’t think that expression is actually a thing, but some movies defy logic and common sense. As the sequel to a much better film called White Lightning, Gator might just be one of those films.

Gator is another Burt Reynolds movie with tonal issues, as well as a lot of stuff that comes down to being fun to watch over anything resembling a plot that makes sense. It’s a lot of noise, and weird jokes, and Burt Reynolds smiling as he takes down a local crime lord named Bama McCall (a supremely entertaining Jerry Reed, who also gives a banger for the opening credits song). Some of the movie’s intentional. Some of it isn’t. Most of it is an enjoyable, over-the-top action movie. The showdown between Gator and Bama is far more entertaining than it has any right to be.

Gator also features the great Alice Ghostley as a woman obsessed with her cats. For whatever reason, Burt would cast her again 22 years later in Hard Time as a different woman nevertheless obsessed with her cats. Why? I have no idea, but it tickles me to death.

 

4. Semi-Tough (1977)

Director: Michael Ritchie

Everyone can relax, as we’re now officially in the range of Burt Reynolds movies where you don’t have to be some sort of freak to enjoy them.

Semi-Tough has a silly premise, with two football players (Reynolds and the forever likable Kris Kristofferson) who have designs on their roommate (Jill Clayburgh, charming as hell here), the daughter of their team’s owner. There’s some stuff satirizing the new age therapy movement of the time, which at least in broad terms has aged a lot better than you’d think. This is lightweight comedy through and through, but it’s steady and never overstays its welcome. Our three leads have good chemistry with each other, and that’s more often than not enough for this sort of thing. The fun is in watching a movie that works well with the charisma of its leads, and Semi-Tough is one of the breezier films in this ranking.

Semi-Tough is at its best when its three main characters are bantering and more often than not hitting on each other. It would have been infinitely more interesting if Reynolds and Kristoferson played that angle between each other, but that probably would have been a bit much for some people in 1977.

 

3. Sharky’s Machine (1981)

Director: Burt Reynolds

Far and away the best movie Burt Reynolds ever directed, and quite possibly his best film in what would be a very turbulent decade for his career and perception of fame, Sharky’s Machine sits comfortably among the best neo-noir films of this period. It’s also nice to see Charles Durning once again working with Reynolds. Honestly, it’s just nice to see Durning in anything.

Sharky’s Machine concerns an Atlanta vice squad detective (Reynolds), whose developing relationship with an expensive call girl (an effective Rachel Ward) means dealing with everyone from crooked politicians to gangsters of all shapes and fun sizes. Sharky’s Machine is sleazy stuff, with Reynolds as the stoic tough guy you’d expect from a film like this, and an excellent cast filled with some of the best character actors of the period.

Reynolds director choices don’t aways make sense in Sharky’s Machine, which sometimes makes maddening choices to stop for romance and/or comedy, but he understands for the most part how to make a good, grimy pulp story. The gorgeous, vibrant cinematography by five-time Oscar nominee William A. Fraker gives this movie enough style to make up for its relatively minor deficiencies.

 

2. Deliverance (1972)

Director: John Boorman

Keeping in mind that Deliverance has one of the most disturbing rape scenes you’ll probably ever see in a mainstream film, there’s no question that this is a must-watch for anyone who can handle that kind of thing.

Deliverance, the story of four friends who are brutally attacked by backwoods dwellers during their hunting and fishing vacation in rural Georgia, is a high mark for everyone involved. When John Boorman’s comments about the semantics of the words “film” and “movies” were being misunderstood by people who don’t know how to read, one of the ways they dismissed his views was by mentioning terrible films he had directed, like Zardoz and The Exorcist II.  To which I would say “He also directed one of the scariest non-horror movies of the decade, so who gives a shit.”

Deliverance is not overtly a genre film, but it’s an extremely disturbing one whose darkest and strangest moments live up to their reputation. The dueling banjos scene alone is legendary stuff, parodied dozens and dozens of times throughout pop culture history, is exhilarating from a talent point of view, but it’s also a deeply unsettling as an indication of where our protagonists find themselves. It’s going to get worse before it gets even worse than that, and it’s debatable if it’s going to ever get better. Burt Reynolds’ wounded macho jerk performance highlights that them over the course of his harrowing journey, and it’s still some of the best Burt ever did in his 60-year career.

 

1. Boogie Nights (1997)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

It’s a shame Burt Reynolds hated the experience of making Boogie Nights with a young Paul Thomas Anderson in 1997. So much so that Reynolds apparently fired his agent, and refused to promote the film to such a degree that it may have cost him the Oscar he had deeply desired to win in his ongoing bid for respectability as an actor.

Then again, maybe it’s not a shame. I’ve seen Anderson’s sprawling ensemble about a group of people who work together in the porn industry, surviving as they do across the turbulent 70s and 80s by forming an extremely dysfunctional family, at least four or five times at this point in my life. Burt Reynolds’ performance as Jack Horner, a shockingly paternal porn director who soon finds it difficult to keep up with an industry that’s passing him by (that’s a touch autobiographical, it would seem), is my favorite thing about this film.

It’s fascinating to find out how much he didn’t seem to get the material, and how uncomfortable he was by everything in the film. I suspect he used those qualities with the incredible script that takes us across two decades and 155 minutes and several characters fragmented, dangerous lives. He plays Jack as a man desperate to maintain a stable center amidst a whole mess of activity and upheaval that he doesn’t quite understand. Combined with the charisma he was very clearly still in possession of and surrounded by one of the best casts ever assembled, he shined with what I’m pretty sure is his absolute best work. Wholly out of his element, Burt Reynolds was seemingly forced to rely on what he could do naturally as an actor. As Boogie Nights proved, that was a lot.

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