What would or could have been cause circa 1970 for something wayward, moody, contemplative, possibly even introspective, is here just an excuse to bring Hollywood flash and frippery out onto the road and into the heartland. Director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Black Rain) might seem to be a little out of his element, but wherever Ridley goes, along go the pastel filters, the night-time steam, the Venetian-blind shadows, the heat ripples, all the rest. Southern Gothic has never looked so chi-chi. (What's the point of going out on location at all?) The plotline starts out open-endedly as a weekend getaway for a pair of Arkansas bosom buddies, a hash slinger and a cowed housewife. (The social station of the characters, together with much else, was tipped off in the title — and it would have been fun to rummage through the wastebasket of scriptwriter Callie Khouri to find her scratch pad of What To Name The Baby before she alighted on the two finalists. Rhonda, Melba, Wanda? Fern, Deedee, Doris?) The two of them don't get halfway through the first evening, however, without having to shoot to death a would-be rapist in the parking lot of a C&W bar. Then, peremptorily discarding the going-to-the-police option, they take a sharp turn into a closed-ended, on-the-lam plot and a weaving path through a liquor-store holdup, an exploding oil truck, a disarmed Highway Patrolman, a roadside litter of cracked-up squad cars, en route to trail's end at the rim of the Grand Canyon. The whole business, including an entire pigpen's worth of male chauvinists, arouses no feminist sentiment as strong as the one of pity and regret that actresses as engaging as Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon have to count themselves fortunate in the present marketplace to be allotted the title roles. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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