Convoy is a 1978 American road action comedy film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Ernest Borgnine, Burt Young, Madge Sinclair and Franklyn Ajaye.

The assorted truckers prevail and decide to head for the state line to avoid prosecution while messing with the police cars while the cops are knocked out.

A janitor at the jail, aware of the plan, sends messages by CB radio that Spider Mike has been wrongfully arrested and beaten.

On the way, Rubber Duck gets separated from the rest of the convoy when the others get stopped by a fake traffic accident staged by the local troopers.

His four previous films, Cross of Iron (1977), The Killer Elite (1975), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), had struggled at the box office, and the director needed a genuine blockbuster success.

[7] Unhappy with the screenplay written by B. W. L. Norton, Peckinpah tried to encourage the actors to re-write, improvise and ad-lib their dialogue, with little success.

[8] In another departure from the script, Peckinpah attempted to add a new dimension to the film by casting a pair of black actors as members of the convoy: Madge Sinclair as Widow Woman and Franklyn Ajaye as Spider Mike.

[9] When the convoy made a sharp turn at an intersection, the white 1972 Brockway 361 truck of Widow Woman accidentally tipped over, nearly crashing into a car.

[10] The original rough cut of Convoy, assembled by Peckinpah and his long-time editor Garth Craven in early 1978, had an estimated running time of 220 minutes.

[11][12][verification needed] Questioned about the production of Convoy during an interview in July 1978, Peckinpah is quoted as saying: "In preparing Cross of Iron I kept hearing on Armed Forces radio this song about “We'll hit the gate goin' 98, Let them truckers roll, Ten-Four!” and I said “By God, I'd like to be out on that highway!” And so I got out there, but I ended up not being there at all."

[14] The restored 'Second Unit' 1970 Mack RS731LST on-camera–double truck tractor and the only original remaining tank trailer were to return in late 2023 to be on display at the National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, Missouri.

"[19] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "Sam Peckinpah's 'Convoy' starts out as 'Smokey And The Bandit,' segues into either 'Moby Dick' or 'Les Miserables,' and ends in the usual script confusion and disarray, the whole stew peppered with the vulgar excess of random truck crashes and miscellaneous destruction ... Every few minutes there's some new roadblock to run, alternating with pithy comments on The Meaning Of It All.

"[21] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a multivehicle wreck of a movie" and "slack stuff, missing as a sizzling love story, missing as the kind of funny anti-authoritarian statement the song was, arriving well past the peak of the CB phenomenon, making no statement one way or the other about trucks or truckers.

"[22] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film "suggests a shotgun misalliance of 'Billy Jack' and 'Smokey and the Bandit,'" and all Peckinpah could do with the "stupid material" was "to pretend he's getting somewhere by noisily spinning his wheels.

More often than not even his visual pyrotechnics falls short, and he's left trying to rationalize nonsensical characters and conflicts by imposing his sentimentalities about men of war on them.

"[23] John Pym of The Monthly Film Bulletin was generally positive, writing, "What sets this apart from other recent citizen-band road movies is the skill with which Peckinpah redefines the artifacts of the Western, which is what Convoy transparently remains.

It has lines of cavalrymen, a cattle drive, a secret trail to Mexico, a circular camp site, innocent bar-room fisticuffs and a hero who, while caring nothing for women, at the same time reveres the married man and his homestead ...

A more serious edge and less humor was given to the film's story and there are some changes and additions, such as no mention of Spider Mike being African-American, a definite hatred between Rubber Duck and Wallace, a fight between Rubber Duck and Wallace after Spider Mike is broken out of jail, Widow Woman getting married (for the fifth time) and a background story given to Melissa.