(*Movie quote that set the tone of this film's story*) - "Let white man take care of white man's troubles!"Out of The Chase's total running time of 135 minutes - I'd say that its dreary, small-town, soap opera story only rose above that mediocrity for about 10 of those many minutes. It's true.Marlon Brando's irksome, phone-in performance aside - Am I the only one who got so sick to death of hearing the name "Bubber" being spoken by just about everyone (and their dog) in the horrid, little town of Tarl, Texas? Eh? Am I!?And, speaking about "Bubber" - IMO - Only a babbling idiot (which I guess "Bubber" was) would head straight back to his hometown after breaking out of prison. Like - DUH!!??All-in-all - 1966's The Chase was total brain-dead idiocy from start to finish.

This movie was a product of the times like "All in the Family". Yeah, it was a Texas small town full of greedy heartless racist amoral lustful horrible white people. Maybe the writer was projecting her Hollywood social milieu? But nothing about it was believable starting with the beautiful sweet escaped con Bubber (what a stupid name) played by Robert Redford. He only had a couple months to go on his sentence, for a crime that was never mentioned but he had to be a free man like Cool Hand Luke, a classic 60s rebel stereotype mode. But he had to get free. The first big drama was that the hardened con he broke prison with killed a man for his car and money, which of course implicated Blubber. Even though most people in Tarl, the town in question, who knew Bubber knew he was basically a nice guy, lots of people all got it into their heads Bubber was coming back to get them personally. The spiteful weak bank VP Edwin Stewart, played by Robert Duvall, was certain Bubber was going to get him because of what he did to him 20 years ago as teenagers. Meanwhile his cheating lustful wife Emily is flirting with other men at his work place. This is just one example of the cartoonish Peyton Place vibe of the film. The film is partially carried by Marlon Brando as the town sheriff, Calder. He is a good man along with his stolid wife Ruby, played by Angie Dickinson. They managed to work some small Southern town racism on the side to gin up our contempt for these "evil" Southern white people. This is what made the movie so appealing to leftist urbanites and foreigners whose inclination was to regard the whole South as evil racist troglodytes,The script had some intelligence in it, but that was subsumed by its cynical cleverness. But it all failed at the end with a ridiculous and fatal scene in a burning junkyard. Here the locals all gathered to get Bubber, torch the place and party at the same time. The final climactic scene made no sense with one of the locals imitating Jack Ruby and gunning down the hapless Bubber, as our noble sheriff brought him to jail. This of course made no sense since Bubber did not murder a president. At worst he was suspected of murdering a strange man from another part of Texas so the movie's "Jack Ruby" connection is tenuous at best.

***may contain accidental spoilers*** There are movies and there are great movies. This is one of the latter--a magnificently mixed up story about good and bad people and not so good and not so bad people working their way through a crazy hot night in a small Texas town where slowly but surely all hell breaks loose. Even though it sounds like a lead-up to your average and common teen horror flick, The Chase is filled with the best actors in US movie history--even the first ever screen appearance of Robert Redford. It has Marlon Brando, still back in the days before he turned into Marlon the Hutt, with then absolutely gorgeous Angie Dickinson as his wife. Jane Fonda is there but only recognizable for her acting skill.Given such a talented cast, the director, Arthur Penn (Little Big Man and quite a few other little big movies), delivers a tight and perfectly controlled story that builds slowly from languid frustrations through tense dialog, slowly building to a literal explosion. Definitely worth watching.

This is a really,really awful film. More of a TV movie than a big screen motion picture. I gave it four stars out of ten and I think I am being generous. Brando appeared in some really second rate movies during the sixties and this certainly is one of them. There are a brick load full of talented actors and familiar faces but there is not enough story to keep them from doing anything but cameo appearances.There was a great deal of disagreement and tension between the producer, the writer, and the director and it certainly shows . It's probably one of the worst examples of ensemble acting I have ever seen. Its just a bunch of actors reciting lines. There is no chemistry or cohesion. The ending is so bad that you will be convulsed with laughter."The Chase" makes "Robot Monster" look like "Gone with the Wind"