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The film 16 Blocks, in which Bruce Willis takes over 90 minutes to negotiate a distance one could normally stroll in 20, reminds me that only rarely do movies reflect the sheer difficulty most of us experience in getting from A to B. Movie characters zip across cities, states, entire countries with impudent ease, while we in the real world are struggling with traffic jams, industrial action and an inevitable shortage of cabs.
So let's hear it for Planes, Trains and Automobiles, in which Steve Martin's journey from Manhattan, to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Chicago, expands to epic proportions as flights are cancelled and rented cars go up in smoke. Or Quick Change, in which Bill Murray (right) finds that robbing a Manhattan bank is a doddle; the hard part is getting to the airport with the loot when bus drivers refuse to accept anything
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anne billson likes films that show the frustrating difficulties of getting from A to B |
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other than the exact fare.
These guys have got it easy compared to The Warriors, gang-members whose nocturnal hike from the Bronx through enemy territory to their Coney Island home turf is made even more of a slog by encounters with pistol-packing lesbians and goons with baseball bats. Here the term "epic proportions" really does hold water since the screenplay was inspired by the classical Greek text Xenophon's Anabasis.
Or spare a thought for the characters in Pitch Black, whose relatively short trek across a stretch of desert planet is complicated by swoopy, pterodactyl-like creatures treating them like an all-you-can-eat buffet. But even this is a pleasure trip next to John Cleese's efforts to get to Norwich in time for his conference in Clockwise. Truly the stuff of travellers' nightmares. 
FIRST POSTED APRIL 27, 2006
Film Three View: Lemming
Last week: cinematic chivalry
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