Hal Needham · 1977 · road

Hal Needham's 1977 road comedy, the second-biggest box-office hit of its year behind Star Wars. To win a fool's bet, the Bandit and his trucker partner the Snowman set out to bootleg four hundred cases of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta in twenty-eight hours flat, the Bandit running blocker in a black Pontiac Trans Am while the law, in the apoplectic shape of Sheriff Buford T. Justice, gives chase across four states. This route follows the run, west to fetch the beer and the long sprint home along the interstate.

1. 1
   Atlanta

   At a truck rodeo outside Atlanta, the wealthy Burdettes, Big and Little Enos, dangle a wager in front of legendary driver Bo Bandit Darville: eighty thousand dollars if he can run to Texarkana, load up four hundred cases of Coors, and haul it back here in twenty-eight hours, bootlegging beer that cannot legally be sold this far east. Bandit takes the bet, calls up his partner Cledus the Snowman, and lights out west.

2. 2
   Texarkana

   In his black Trans Am, Bandit blasts west to Texarkana while the Snowman follows in the big Kenworth rig. They load the four hundred cases at a warehouse and turn for home with the clock already running. On the way out of town Bandit picks up a runaway bride, Carrie, thumbing a ride in her wedding dress, never guessing she has just jilted the son of a Texas sheriff.

3. 3
   Shreveport

   The Bandit runs blocker out front in the Trans Am, soaking up the attention and the smokeys so the Snowman and his beer can slip through behind. But Carrie's jilted groom is the boy of Sheriff Buford T. Justice, who sets off in furious pursuit across the state line and well beyond his jurisdiction, vowing to run the Bandit into the ground.

4. 4
   Jackson

   Across Louisiana and over the Mississippi the chase swells into a rolling circus, CB radios crackling as truckers and good buddies all down the line run interference for the Bandit. Buford T. Justice wrecks one patrol car after another and falls ever further behind, his temper boiling, his son Junior bewildered in the passenger seat.

5. 5
   Birmingham

   Through Alabama the miles fall away and the smokeys close in from every county, roadblocks and bridges and a small army of cruisers arrayed against one black Trans Am. Bandit jumps a dismantled bridge, slips the lot of them, and keeps the convoy rolling east toward Georgia and the finish line with the twenty-eight hours nearly run out.

6. 6
   Atlanta

   With minutes to spare the Snowman wheels the rig and its beer back into the fairground at Atlanta, the bet won and the impossible run made good. Buford T. Justice arrives too late and too wrecked to do anything but fume, and the Bandit, never one to quit while he is ahead, takes the Burdettes' next dare on the spot and roars off again.