The Last Chase (1981)

From six million dollars to six million pennies, well that’s just the first journey Lee Majors makes as this frankly pretty silly dystopian drama sees him try to escape to “Free California” in his Porsche (complete with plenty of product placement). You see, their United States has run out of oil and cars are banned. Given his has probably got a V12 engine, he isn’t flavour of the month with the authorities as he and his newfound protégé “Ring” (Chris Makepeace) race along the long abandoned (but perfectly maintained) highways to their destination. Meantime, the ace-pilot “J.G.” (Burgess Meredith) is brought out of retirement by the government so he can chase them down in his jet fighter and thwart their plans. Once airborne, though, the airman starts to appreciate the freedoms of the sky - so will he actually carry out his task against his wily antagonist? Maybe if it had a catchy country song (J.W. McCall springs to mind) in the score, or that jingling sound every time “Hart” went really quickly, but no - all we have here is a mediocre Majors, a Meredith who clearly just fancied his fee and not the slightest sense of menace at any stage as they engage in some “Smokey” does “Logan’s Run”. Nothing much to see here, sorry.