Tank
This enjoyable nonsense stars James Garner as a career military man (and private owner of a Sherman tank) who ends up on the wrong side of a redneck sheriff (G.D. Spradlin) by interfering in a bullying deputy's treatment of a prostitute. The corrupt lawman gets his revenge by arresting Garner's teenage son (C. Thomas Howell) on a phony drug charge and locking him away on a brutal prison farm. After taking some lumps there, the poor kid's dad decides to haul out his prized tank and do a little rearranging of the terrain. While the plot sounds like some antiauthority potboiler from the early '70s and the characters are all stick figures, Garner's golden warmth gives this movie some nice dimension. Directed by Marvin J. Chomsky (Victory at Entebbe).--Tom Keogh