I agree! Not without its flaws, but a real good ride, IMHO.
Dominoe is Rachael Ward, of course. For anyone of age in the 1980's, as I was, she was a lead girl in every blokes fantasy life. That voice. That body. Oh my.
I lived in Atlanta at the time it was filmed and believe it or not, Atlanta was a lot smaller sort of town back then - I heard all sorts of funny stories about the filming and how fun Burt Reynolds was. This was eons before the Atlanta Olympics and the city felt sort of looked over and ignored by New York, Chicago, and LA - so we were all real proud of the film. Burt always had a soft spot for Atlanta as he is a southern boy and Atlanta is the sort of unofficial capital of the south.
For awhile Burt was ridiculed by the "smart" set and a lot of his fans in the south felt for him as some of the disdain seemed piled on him because he:
a. made films about the South which is held in contempt by some of the East Coast "elites" as being part of the "red state" flyovers.
b. made films that were, mostly, accessible by a wide audience that the whole family could enjoy. I didn't care for them all, but a whole lot of people did and what is wrong with that? Not every film has to be "Citizen Kane". Besides, some of them were very good indeed - "Smokey and the Bandit" is a great road picture with great comedy, a good heart, and wonderful chemistry between Burt and Sally Field.
c. was very, very successful for awhile - and what breeds more contempt than that.
Anyway, I hope Burt is proud of "Sharky's Machine" - he should be. He did a fine job. It deserves a much higher IMDB rating.
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