Robert Zemeckis’ long and storied career consists of various phases, not all advantageous to his artistic success. The director’s halcyon days saw him converging elements of science-fiction, fantasy, and comedy to make the modern blockbuster with films like Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. A decade later, Zemeckis began garnering awards acclaim, notably with his sweet and affecting modern-day American fable, Forrest Gump. As technology advanced, he became increasingly less interested in ingenious storytelling and character and more invested in motion capture and CGI, leading to his current muddied reputation after years of widely disliked experiments. It’s easy to forget that Zemeckis got his start writing and directing broad, zany comedies that had the mark of an auteur director. While overlooked upon release, Used Cars is both an anomaly in his filmography and the blueprint for his viability as a blockbuster filmmaker.

Robert Zemeckis Went Mean and Crude With His Second Film, ‘Used Cars’
Image via Columbia Pictures

Robert Zemeckis’ upcoming film, Here, which reunites the director with Forrest Gump stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright and screenwriter Eric Roth, looks to be a hybrid of his two recent shortcomings: an overreliance on visual effects and treacly storytelling. For those longing for Zemeckis to break out of the uncanny valley, check out Used Cars, a humbling reminder of his sharp eye for character development and tactile set pieces. The 1980 black comedy follows a hot-shot sales executive, Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell), who aspires to run for state senate. When the aging owner of the dilapidated used car lot, Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden), dies of foul play at the hands of his sinister twin brother, Roy (Warden), a successful car dealership owner across the street, Rudy and his colleagues hustle their way to make sure that he doesn’t inherit the lot.

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Until 2012’s Denzel Washington-led drama, Flight, Used Cars was Zemeckis’ only R-rated film. In retrospect, the film seems like a far cry from Zemeckis’ tales of adolescent time travel and magical trains. Rudy and his con artist colleagues, Jeff (Gerrit Graham) and Jim the Mechanic (Frank McRae), are not the symbols of an idyllic Americana like Marty McFly and Forrest Gump. However, they represent the cutthroat capitalism of the decade, where everyone from car salespeople to Wall Street brokers carried an attitude of accruing wealth at all costs. The crude hijinks that the dealers exhibit in their television ads and sales tactics feel truthful in a way that most zany sex comedies of the ’80s are bereft of. Zemeckis’ debut film, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a comedy about Beatlemania-obsessed teens during the night of the band’s monumental Ed Sullivan Show performance, as well as the Zemeckis-scripted Steven Spielberg war comedy, 1941, is about the hysteria and unscrupulous behavior prevailing throughout various pockets in American culture.

Robert Zemeckis Displays His Exceptional Skills as a Genre Filmmaker in ‘Used Cars’

Zemeckis, along with his co-writer and frequent collaborator Bob Gale, takes the universally understood concept of used car dealers being slimy swindlers and turns it into a pitch-black comic tour de force. More so than in any of Zemeckis’ motion-capture films or CGI-filled oddities, Used Cars showcased Zemeckis’ knack for impressive set pieces within the mold of a broad comedy. These films have the spirit of a freewheeling, gag-filled comedy without any pretense of artful filmmaking. However, Used Cars’ has the precise narrative backbone of an intimate character drama, which is a product of Zemeckis’ skills as an engineer of parallel stories that all tie together. Multiple story and character threads are juggled with the same frantic energy as the characters in the film, but everything comes crashing to a head during an outlandish car chase climax. Other gags, such as Jeff’s superstitious tendencies, seem extraneous at first, but they prove their worth in compelling set pieces.

Zemeckis’ energy from behind the camera and the editing bay provides the majority of the laughs in Used Cars. The film begins with a gag involving Rudy attaching money as bait to a fishing rod to lure a customer on Roy’s lot to his. Luke’s death was caused by a thrilling driving sequence where a stunt driver hired by Roy gives the twin brother a heart attack. Zemeckis’ most virtuosic work is seen in the culmination of Jeff’s superstition inside a bar, where he spills salt shakers and breaks glasses in a chaotic meltdown. In his second film, Robert Zemeckis deployed his wacky Three Stooges and Marx Brothers-inspired slapstick humor with an edginess missing in his future work. With a relatively lengthy runtime of 113 minutes, Used Cars throws a lot at its audience. While every gag and eccentric character detail isn’t always cohesive, the director’s infectious passion is omnipresent. Zemeckis’ less inspiring films of late are desperate for Used Cars’ level of admirable messiness.

Used Cars is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

A struggling used car salesman is caught in a high-stakes rivalry between two competing car lots in a small town. As he navigates deceptive tactics and eccentric characters, he aims to save his dealership and achieve his ambitions amidst a landscape of humor and subterfuge.Release Date July 11, 1980 Cast Kurt Russell , Jack Warden , Gerrit Graham , Frank McRae , Deborah Harmon , Joe Flaherty , David L. Lander , Michael McKean , Michael Talbott , Harry Northup , Alfonso Arau , Al Lewis , Woodrow Parfrey , Andrew Duncan Runtime 113 Minutes

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