![]() As they get out of the car and move across the street to the pool hall, a bright green truck with the words LEGALIZE MARJIUANA on it drives in front them. The two men proceed into town to introduce Gator around. Ultimately, Dude says, “If you want to get that sheriff, you’re gon’ have to kill him.” But he decides to help Gator anyway. Everybody is involved, and no one is going to crack under pressure. Gator explains that he only wants Connors because his brother was killed, and Dude retorts that he doesn’t care a lick for Connors, but isn’t fool enough to help- and moreover, obtaining legal proof to convict Connors would be impossible. The men fuss with each other, and Gator punches Dude for calling him a “stool pigeon,” then they get down to business. Dude sees Gator drive up, gets his gun, and goes outside to meet the unwelcome stranger, but Gator sneaks around, goes inside, and meets him, taking the gun away. ![]() He shows up at Dude’s ramshackle auto shop. However, Gator won’t give up that easily. Gator tells him, “I’m gon’ help you make a few deliveries, take down a few names.” About Dude’s resentment at being roped-in, Gator tells him that he only plans on going after JC Connors, to which Dude replies, with a sly smile, “You may as well swim on over to China and get ol’ Mao Tse Tung,” and drives off. Dude is skittish and evasive but recognizes that he has no choice: work with Gator or get busted. The first step is to make contact with Dude Watson, a two-bit mechanic on the dirt-track circuit and a moonshine runner who is in danger of heading to prison himself. As peaceful people, his parents urge him not to do this, though his father intimates that Donnie’s death had something to do with “the kinds of things college kids do these days.” Gator tells him that he has no plans to get a job or to bring in a crop, but will go to Bogan County and get the sheriff JC Connors (Ned Beatty). Though their elder son is home from prison, he is home to seek out his brother’s killer. Next, Gator goes home, to the small shack where his parents farm, but the reunion isn’t as happy as his parents might like. Gator flies into town, shakes those cops and another on a motorcycle, and is greeted by two pretty blondes who are smiling and glad to see him. He has the wind in his hair, but catches the attention of an Arkansas State Police car, which is no match for him. He peels off his prison-issue coat and tie and throws them out the window. Once Gator is out of the men’s car and into his own, we get to see the real Gator McKlusky, behind the wheel of a brown 1971 Ford Custom 500 that hauls ass. In a dim office, Gator begins to spill the beans, which gets him out of jail and into a car with two law men who give him the details of the situation he is to infiltrate. However, this turn of events has changed everything. Up to this point, Gator has kept his mouth shut about the moonshine business and has been doing his time. He wants to find out who killed his brother. Gator soon runs right into the warden, on horseback and brandishing a shotgun.īut Gator won’t get the punishment that we think he’ll get – extra years, or worse – since he has decided to cooperate with law enforcement. ![]() in his prison-issue white clothes and in broad daylight. Gator begins first to stride away, then to run once it becomes clear that he will be trying to break out of jail! The music plays then speeds up, as Gator McKlusky is making his way through the rural landscape. Their daddy thinks it has something to do with the sheriff “on account of them protesting.”īack in the bunk room, Gator is lying on his small bed, alone and brooding, when an officer comes in, berating him as a lazy moonshiner who he thinks he can do anything he pleases, but when the officer yanks Gator’s feet of the bed, the prisoner jumps up and belts him. ![]() In a large, empty room, Gator finds his sister Lou Ella, who tells him that isn’t his mother or father who is dead but his brother Donnie, who was found in the lake. After a moment, the prison warden comes in to tell him that he has a visitor. In the next scene, we see the auto shop of a prison where a shirtless Gator McKlusky (Burt Reynolds) is working on an engine and joking with the other men. The older men then paddle nonchalantly back the way they came. ![]() When the older two arrive at a point that seems to satisfy them, the two bound men, who are young and long-haired, are blasted with a shotgun and their canoe sinks into the lake. The light is dim, their pace is slow and calm, and ominous, twangy swamp music plays. One of the men in the first boat is in a sheriff’s uniform, and the other in a clean, white, short-sleeved shirt. White Lightning begins ominously with two men paddling a canoe through a swampy lake while towing another canoe that holds two other men, who are bound and gagged. ![]()
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