Robert J. Maxwell John Schneider is Eddie Macon, a young man imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. He escapes from the slams, arranges for his beautiful wife and lovely kiddie to meet him on the border bridge in Laredo, kidnaps the governor's daughter, Lee Purcell, in her Mercedes, and races across Texas with Kirk Douglas hot on his tail.The musical score has a theme song, a kind of cowboy rock, with lyrics like, "Put your head on my shoulder, we can talk about things before." The music gets a jazzed-up treatment during the requisite car chase through the cemetery. It slows down and we get to hear a mournful harmonica during the scenes in which Schneider and Purcell get to know one another and Schneider talks about how much he misses his wife.The couple spend the night in the La Posada Motel in Laredo. By this time, Schneider is both filthy and exhausted from the flight. Lee Purcell coaxes him into taking a shower. She follows him in and gives him a loving wash and a kind of massage. Later she puts some moves on him but he, having just woke up, says he remembers nothing of the night before and he refuses to do anything untoward with her now because -- "You're wife," says Purcell, capping his apology.Well, the fact is that Schneider may be a good-looking guy. At least he looks, sounds, and acts like a typical Hollywood actor with an even sun tan and carefully styled hair. But he's a complete moron for brushing off Lee Purcell because she's a fox. On top of that, his three years in stir may have taught him a lot, as he claims, but they never taught him how to act. I don't think he utters a believable line in the entire movie and there are moments when a viewer might understandably wonder if he's wandered by mistake into a high school play in East Windsor Township.Purcell, however, does a professional job and so does Kirk Douglas as the savvy cop in pursuit. The dialog isn't a total loss but I'm confused about the direction and about the intended audience. It's a modern Western that smacks of the drive-in theater, but it's both cruel and indulgent to the Texans we meet on the screen. I'll give an example. Douglas is relaxing at a bar for a moment and this dumb-looking bar tender tells him a joke about blacks. It's truly offensive -- yet it's funny too. Douglas replies, "That's very funny," with no expression on his face. The audience will presumably snicker at the joke before feeling a twinge of guilt. The encounter has no function in the plot. It's simply slipped in for a laugh from the cowboys in the theater. This is known as having your cake and eating it too.As I say, the dialog as a whole isn't insulting. The writers did okay, given the plot that was demanded of them. But there is no invention in the movie. Not even in the title. "Eddie Macon's Run"? Well, there had been a successful "Logan's Run" some years before, and "The Last Run" more recently. Then there was "Macon County Line" and "Return to Macon County," the second being an indication that the first had made money, and not to mention Macon, Georgia. The failure of the film to get Texas down on celluloid wouldn't be so noticeable if there hadn't already been some that had done so successfully. Try Sam Pekinpah's "The Getaway." Or, if you want still more stylized but empathic realism, try the more recent, "No Country For Old Men." That last, a superb study of the Southwest and its citizenry, was written and directed by the Coen brothers, two nice young Jewish kids from Minnesota.

bkoganbing Watching Eddie Macon's Run and seeing what John Schneider had to go through in flashback in what landed him in Huntsville State Prison and his efforts on a second escape attempt, I concluded someone really does not like the great state of Texas. It's important to remember that Schneider moved his family from Florida to Texas because of promised good paying jobs with the oil industry. At that time Texas was booming because of oil, a lot of people went there like Schneider. But Schneider who needs money badly because his young son has a rare blood disease finds himself working for peanuts because of some kickback scheme. When he protests and gets nasty about it, he gets tossed in jail for a five year rap. On his second attempt to escape he breaks out during the prison rodeo and he's got a good plan.He's also got like Richard Kimble his own Lieutenant Gerard in Kirk Douglas who is less than impressed with the cowboy mentality of the place. He's from a civilized land called New Jersey and he brought in Schneider before and can do it again if for no other reason than to show the rest of the hicks good investigatory police work.One of the few people that Schneider gets some sympathy from is heiress Lee Purcell. And she's helping him essentially for the thrill.Schneider with his devotion to his family was one of the more noble heroes of the Eighties cinema. We the audience hope that he makes it on his run from Huntsville to the Laredo border town. Eddie Macon's Run compares most favorably to those classics from Warner Brothers in the Thirties, The Life Of Jimmy Dolan and They Made Me A Criminal. And if you're familiar with those films you know how Eddie Macon's Run will turn out.

JoeytheBrit I remember reading the book on which this film is based a long time ago – before the film was made, that's for sure. Ever since I discovered it had been made into a film I've wanted to watch it, but it seems to be one of those films that is only rarely shown on the box. Now that I have, while I'm not exactly disappointed with what I saw, it's fair to say that so much more could have been made of the source material by a more accomplished writer than journeyman Jeff Kanew. I remember the tone of the book being quite dark, almost noirish, but none of that comes across in the film. For the most part, it has the look of a TV movie and some producer made a monumental mistake when he decided to allow John Schneider to sing his own syrupy songs on the soundtrack. But then, it has to be said that the music matches perfectly those early sickly scenes of domestic bliss between Macon (Schneider), his wife (Leah Ayres) and son Bobby (Matthew Meece).Pretty soon, it's Bobby, not the scenes, that becomes sickly, which is where Eddie's plight begins. It's where Schneider's plight begins too because, every time the script asks him to emote, his TV credentials come right to the fore. The fact that the script is downright awful doesn't help either.Macon's run takes him across a deep south populated by stereotypical rednecks, stereotypical small-town cops, stereotypical floozies, stereotypical bar-room drunks (including an impossibly young J. T. Walsh) and a stereotypical tart with a heart. Despite this, the film manages to remain entertaining, and motors along when it's focusing on the darker aspects of the tale rather than trying to pull at your heartstrings. Hot on Macon's heels is grizzly cop Marzack (Kirk Douglas). Douglas is too old for the part, and his judgment when it came to choosing roles was all shot to hell by the 80s, but he still shows Schneider up in their few scenes together.For all the hardships Macon is forced to endure, you know there will be a happy ending. It turns out that Marzack, like Lee Purcell's tart-with-a-heart, simply envies Macon his picture-perfect family, something he managed to keep well-hidden from us all for all but the last five minutes of the film

bodalu My friend and I saw Eddie Macon's Run at the theater when it was first released. I remember really liking it back then and I bought the video tape of it a year or so ago. I enjoyed it as much as I did when I was in my late teens. It contained action that had me on the edge of my seat with the good cop chasing the bad guy scenes, with a twist. It had some flirtatiousness, and was also a love story. There were parts where it kept you wondering what would happen next. It gave me so many different feelings throughout the movie; anywhere from being scared, sad, and angered to happy and relieved, etc. You can never go wrong with Kirk Douglas and John Schneider in the key roles.