Two drifters on the run from small lives
Back Roads, directed by Martin Ritt and released in 1981, is a road movie with a difference: it is less interested in the romance of the open road than in the small, stubborn lives people are trying to escape. Sally Field plays Amy Post, a prostitute in a small Alabama town who is framed for a crime she did not commit, and Tommy Lee Jones plays Elmore Pratt, a former boxer who has just lost his job at a car wash and who finds himself, almost by accident, on the run with her. Together they drive, argue, steal, and slowly, reluctantly, fall in love. It is a film about two people who have very little, and who discover, on the back roads of the American South, that they might have each other. Ritt, a director known for his humane, socially conscious films, gives the story a warmth and a toughness that suit both of his stars perfectly.
Jones’s Elmore Pratt is a classic Jones character: a man who has been knocked down by life and who refuses to stay down, even when staying down might be the sensible thing to do. Elmore is not a hero. He is a drifter with a temper, a man who talks too much and thinks too little, and Jones plays him with a loose, funny energy that is different from the coiled intensity of his earlier roles. He is charming in Back Roads in a way he rarely is elsewhere, and that charm matters, because it is what makes Amy, and the audience, believe in him despite his flaws. When Elmore jokes, it is often to cover embarrassment. When he boasts, it is often because he is afraid. Jones lets us see both the joke and the fear, and that double vision gives the character depth.
A partnership of equals
The heart of Back Roads is the partnership between Field and Jones, two actors at the height of their powers, playing characters who are equals in their marginality. Amy is not a woman waiting to be rescued, and Elmore is not a man who knows how to rescue anyone. They rescue each other, clumsily, by sticking together when it would be easier to split up. Field, fresh from her Oscar win for Norma Rae, another Ritt film, brings a fierce intelligence to Amy, and Jones matches her scene for scene. Their arguments are funny and real, their silences are comfortable, and their growing affection feels earned rather than scripted. It is one of the most appealing screen pairings of the early 1980s, and it is a shame the film itself is not better remembered.
Ritt directs with his usual attention to place and to working people. The Alabama locations feel real, not dressed, and the film’s humour comes from character rather than from gags. Jones, who grew up in Texas and understands the South from the inside, is completely at home here. He plays Elmore’s accent, his manners, and his pride without exaggeration, and he gives the character a physical presence, the former boxer’s way of moving, that tells us about Elmore’s past without a word of exposition. It is the kind of detailed, unshowy work that Jones has always excelled at, and it is on full display in Back Roads.
Comedy, crime, and tenderness
The film’s plot, involving a stolen car, a pursuing sheriff, and a series of small-time scams, is deliberately modest. Ritt is not interested in a grand crime saga. He is interested in what happens when two people who have been treated as disposable decide to take a chance on each other. Jones plays Elmore’s criminality as desperation rather than villainy. He steals because he is broke, he lies because he is scared, and he keeps going because stopping would mean admitting defeat. That moral shading is important, because it keeps the audience on Elmore’s side even when he is behaving badly. We do not approve of everything he does, but we understand why he does it, and understanding, in Ritt’s films, is a form of compassion.
Back Roads was not a major commercial success, and it has remained a somewhat overlooked entry in both stars’ filmographies. That is a pity, because it shows Jones in a lighter, more romantic register than the roles for which he is usually remembered. He is funny, he is sexy, he is vulnerable, and he is, above all, human. The film also shows his range: within a few years, he had played a Vietnam veteran, a detective, a country husband, and now a small-time drifter with a heart. That range, that refusal to be typecast, is what made him one of the most valuable actors of his generation.
Why Elmore Pratt endures
Elmore Pratt endures as a signature Jones role because he reminds us that Jones is not only a granite lawman. He is also a romantic, a comedian, and a man who can play tenderness without embarrassment. The role is a bridge between his early, edgier work and the more mainstream success that would follow in the 1990s. It shows an actor comfortable in his own skin, willing to be foolish, willing to be wrong, and willing to let a co-star shine. That generosity, again, is a hallmark of Jones’s career. He does not need to dominate a film to make it work. He needs only to be true, and in Back Roads, he is true in every scene.
Watch Back Roads for the road scenes, for the arguments in cheap motels and diners, and for the way Jones and Field make a small story feel large. Notice how Elmore changes, almost without noticing it himself, from a man running away from his life to a man running toward someone else’s. It is a quiet transformation, played with great warmth, and it is one of the most appealing performances Tommy Lee Jones ever gave.