Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (March 24, 2026)
Casts don’t come much more star-studded than 1966’s The Chase. With Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford as the leads, we find a trio of Hollywood legends.
Loose cannon Charlie "Bubber" Reeves (Redford) breaks out of prison after he serves part of a sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. He eventually ends up headed back toward his small Texas hometown of Tarl.
During his absence, Bubber’s wife Anna (Fonda) engaged in a romance with the also-married Jake Rogers (James Fox), a factor that seems likely to agitate the desperate Bubber if he learns of this. Local lawman Sheriff Calder (Brando) needs to deal with a mix of concerns related to Bubber’s anticipated arrival.
In addition to the three actors mentioned at the top, Chase comes with plenty of other famous talent involved. We get director Arthur Penn one year prior to his classic Bonnie and Clyde, writers Horton Foote and Lillian Hellman, producer Sam Spiegel and castmembers EG Marshall, Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall, and many other recognizable names.
All of that sounds like a guarantee that Chase will deliver a top-notch flick, doesn’t it? Yes, but unfortunately, the final product ends up as a bit of a dud.
Actually, “a bit of a dud” understates the problematic film we find here. An unfocused and meandering piece of hokum, The Chase delivers a surprisingly dull and flawed experience.
Given the title, one might assume a thriller of sorts. Instead, we wind up with cheap soap opera material.
Even though the plot nominally revolves around Bubber, most of the movie concentrates on the sordid private lives of other locals. Indeed, Chase often feels like it goes out of its way to avoid Bubber, and we barely see second-billed Fonda’s Anna for the flick’s initial hour.
That does change over the subsequent time, but this still ends up as an oddly meandering tale. It packs in far too many characters and does too little to explore them.
Instead, Chase occupies itself with its one-dimensional soap opera characters and their overdone soap opera antics. We get cartoonish glimpses of all the affairs and other potentially scandalous goings-on.
All of these add up to a movie more likely to inspire laughs than drama. Chase seems so relentlessly overwrought that it turns ridiculous.
Despite all those noted actors, none of them offer memorable performances. Try as I might, I can’t swallow the suave and charismatic Redford as a guy named “Bubber”, and he does next to nothing to depict a guy who seems like he grew up in a small Texas town.
At least Fonda sort of attempts an accent, but she doesn’t bring much to her underdrawn part either. Brando manages to fare a bit better, at least, though the flick asks little of him.
In the midst of all this melodrama, Chase occasionally attempts some social commentary, such as when locals harass a Black guy briefly misidentified as Bubber. This feels gratuitous and doesn’t mesh with the rest of the flick.
Not that this material hurts The Chase, as that would be difficult given the generally feeble nature of the project. Arguably one of the greatest wastes of talent in Hollywood history, virtually nothing about this sudsy stinker works.
