Gator

Everything potentially interesting and entertaining about the film White Lightning (1973) is missing in the sequel Gator (1976). Burt Reynolds as Gator McKlusky has been blow-dried, face-lifted, uplifted, and sanitized. What was dark and brooding about him in the first film is here smoothed away. Gator in this film is a good old boy with a starched shirt and neatly combed hair. He's not that much of a good-old-boy—he's suave and urbane, in a lizardly sort of way. He drives a succession of fancy cars. He has somehow acquired a daughter—she's nine years old. He flirts with young girls in the town square. And his dad, who once lived in an old farm house in the country, now lives in an old house in the middle of the swamp. While car chases were the byword of the first film, fast boats are the trademark here. Gator is a package.

The plot of White Lightning seems to have been repackaged here: Gator is just out of jail, where he spent a second sentence for moonshine. An agent from New York, Irving Greenfield (Jack Weston), convinces the local police to pressure Gator into helping them bring down Bama McCall (Jerry Reed), the crime boss of the fictional Georgia Dunston County. He cooperates, but the Gator introduced in the first film is long gone. Gator in this film is a moral man in the conventional way. He goes undercover to work for Bama, not aware that his former friend is deep into the underworld. He soon becomes disillusioned with Bama's criminal ways. He is offended by the young girls employed by Bama as prostitutes. He's offended by how Bama treats black people. (He makes clear that he is "color blind and that "black is beautiful"). These traits are carried over from the earlier film, where they made sense, but here, in a context that is more cartoon-like than real, they seem like meaningless sops meant to assure the audience that Gator is a "good man." All the interesting ambiguities (such as they were) of his former character are now sharp and clear. The sequel offers the same criminal milieu as its predecessor, but in a context more influenced by the crime of the big city—protection money, prostitution, drugs, murder. This is intended as an indication of how the modern world has come to the urban South.

Part of the humor in Gator is based on the clash between Greenfield's Jewish New York background and the conservative protestant Southerners of Georgia. The Georgia governor in the film inasmuch asks why the government is sending a New York Jew to assist him in uncovering corruption in a backwoods Georgia county. He doesn't believe such a person could be effective. Greenfield comes across as determined and committed, but also as ignorant of the area he is investigating. Although the film makes no further overt references to his religion, he does mug and clown around in a way that can be associated with Jewish stereotypes. The film exploits the idea that he is a fish out of water. And although Greenfield is supposed to be an experienced officer of the law, he's none-too-subtle in his behavior—he calls attention to himself in various ways—hanging out at the swimming pool of a hotel where he is not registered, getting drunk at a town bar, and in general acting out of place. His main role is one of comic relief. It's Gator who has the abilities, if anyone does, to deal with the corrupt Bama and his minions. The film does not use the contrast between Greenfield and Gator (or other Southerners) as a way of exploring the underpinnings of Southern culture. It does not fully explore the friendship (of sorts) that develops between Greenfield and Gator, but that friendship is clearly implied, and it's another sign of Gator's openness, his lack of prejudice.

Gator takes place in Georgia. An early scene supposedly takes place in the Governor's Office of the state capitol building in Atlanta. Savannah is apparently the setting for another scene. Geographically, everything is out of place, but no matter. This film sometimes seems to be a comedy and sometimes a tragedy and sometimes a tragicomedy and in all three instances it fails to meet the demands of the genre.

As a Southern hero, Gator in this film moves Burt Reynolds forwards towards the character he'll portray in Smoky and the Bandit. There's not much difference between Gator and the Bandit. Interestingly, the second unit director and stunt coordinator on both Gator films is Hal Needham, who went on to be the director of the Smoky films. Although Jerry Reed's Bama character is apparently killed at the end of this film, he is restored to another name and life in the Smoky films as the Bandit's friend and compatriot.

There are a number of instances in Gator (as in White Lightning) where the characters seem to be waiting around, trying to figure out what to do next. This particularly seems the case in a scene where Bama has laced Gator's drink with a drug intended to knock him out. The scene seems poorly improvised and tedious. Needham's abilities as a director to avoid such scenes, his focus on action and car chases, suited him for directing the film that would be the major hit of Reynolds's career and that would catapult the star, for a time at least, to the level of a Southern cultural icon.

In general, as a film Gator is a mess. It lacks basic coherence. Reynolds directed. Jerry Reed overacts, Reynolds underacts, and Jack Weston lampoons. Lauren Hutton as ambitious Yankee reporter Aggie Maybanks is in the film, apparently, only to provide a romantic interest for Gator. The film does not develop their attraction to each other in a gradual way. It's simply there, chemically speaking, from the first time they see one another. As Gator, Greenfield, Hutton, and Emmeline Cavanaugh (played by Alice Ghostley--her role has no rational explanation—she's present simply to provide another layer of comic relief) hide out from Bama in a beach house, Aggie and Gator sneak off to the beach for a romantic tryst totally at odds with the rest of the film. In sharp contrast to the largely comic tone of the film, Greenfield and Ghostley's character are soon after brutally murdered by Bama and his henchman.

Worst of all, Gator as a manly, physical, rebellious hero comes across in this film as a slightly dyspeptic golfer in an acrylic shirt. He is Burt Reynold's self-parody.