Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack prove how to win in Las Vegas: rob the casinos! He, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson and more are the epitome of cool in this hot heist caper. The tone of the film is curiously serious--one somehow expected that the Rat Pack would have made a more buoyant first picture. But it is something to see these guys together, if largely for nostalgia reasons.
Thirty big-name stars, 300-horsepower horseplay and 3,000 breakneck miles: that's the revved-up sequel Cannonball Run II. A real-life race inspired both The Cannonball Run and this follow-up. Director Hal Needham drove in a good-natured yet admittedly illegal race called The Cannonball Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. To elude the law, Needham and his pals disguised their entry as an ambulance.
Like The Gumball Rally (1976) before it, former stuntman Hal Needham's The Cannonball Run was inspired by the same real-life cross-country road race. If The Gumball Rally was the critical favorite, The Cannonball Run was the box-office favorite (spawning the almost-as-successful sequel, Cannonball Run II, a few years later). Aside from top-billed stars Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise (stars of Needham's Smokey and the Bandit series) plus Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
