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Recent videocassette releases, reviewed by Times critics.
Movies *** “Thunder Road.”
MGM/UA. $59.95. Long considered one of the ultimate drive-in movies, the granddaddy of both “The Last American Hero” and “Smokey and the Bandit,” this black-and-white drama is still entertaining if you take it in the raffish, off-slant, what-the-hell spirit with which star-producer Robert Mitchum obviously intended it. A super-chilled moonshine-runner takes on the Feds, the big-city gangsters and the crookedest, most treacherous roads around, while romancing one woman (songstress Keely Smith), running from another (Sandra Knight) and fighting to keep his younger brother (played by son Jim Mitchum) straight and clean. It has a languorous rhythm, which matches its star’s sleepy eyes, and you might wish Don Siegel or Phil Karlson had directed, instead of the artier Arthur Ripley. But it’s still good, nasty fun, as barbed and racy as a shot of hot hootch.
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