Silver Streak (1976)

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Silver Streak (1976)

7/10

Starring

Gene Wilder

Jill Clayburgh

Richard Pryor

Patrick McGoohan

Directed by Arthur Hiller

Silver Streak is the first collaboration between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and it is as funny as they come. The movie itself starts off in thriller mode, leaving you the watcher with a form of suspense as you eagerly wait to see what will come off the pairing of Gene Wilder and Jill Clayburgh. Then over an hour passes and Richard Pryor is introduced and then the movie twist to a comedy Thriller mash up and then you find yourself eagerly waiting for what Gene and Richard would do next.

Set in America but actually done in Canada with the help of a Canadian director Arthur Hiller, this movie set was done on a fictional railroad named "AMRoad."

The plot follows the story of a book editor named George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) who was travelling by train from Los Angeles to Chicago to attend his sister's wedding. The train he boarded was called the Silver Streak and it was on board the train that George met a vitamin salesman who ended up not being who he says he was. Bob (the vitamin salesman) told George to try hook up with a girl on the train, as he found that the girls on trains will hookup with anyone. George took the advice and met and hooked up with Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh).

Hilly on the other hand works for a Professor, who was about to release a book on Rembrandt. The Professor’s enemy and the antagonist of the movie Devereau was ready to do anything to make sure the book never gets released and the only person standing in his way happens to be George, who saw a dead body that looked like the Professor being thrown off the train.

Now George and a thief he ran into named Muldoone (Richard Pryor) have to find a way to get on the train that George got thrown off and save Hilly from Devereau.

Although Gene and Richard still went on to make three other movies together none was as funny or well received than their first duo together, Silver Streaks. The screenplay is where the movie catches your attention, with more than half of the shots done in a train, which can be clustery the cinematography was actually good. The movie script was well written that the incidents that lead to Gene’s in and out of the train actually makes you feel sorry for him other than be disgusted by the characters incompetence to stay on the train.

Silver Streak was a critical acclaim movie and also a box office success, it found itself on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs as number 95, and it is one movie that you will enjoy owning the DVD.