Red Line 7000 (1965)
Critic Nick Pinkerton recently fired out the Twitter provocation that âfor decades nearly the entire weight of the industrial American film criticism apparatus has been put into forcing people to pay attention to Sundance indies that no one will remember in a year when it should have been telling them to just chill and watch Red Line 7000.â With this yearâs Sundance titles already starting to appear on these shores, and said Howard Hawks racing-car drama showing up on Talking Pictures TV this weekend, itâs a fine time to trial his theory. Hawksâ late-period movies have long played the role of a stress test for the auteur theory. Can a fishing movie involving a shot of a bear riding a motorbike (1964âs Manâs Favorite Sport?) be an autumnal masterpiece? Indeed it can. Red Line 7000 is the picture he made just after that, a flabbier return to the speedway thrills and off-track camaraderie of his 1932 The Crowd Roars â one tha